The computer-aided fabrication environment (CAFE) is a software system being developed at MIT for use in the manufacture of integrated circuits. CAFE is intended to be used in all phases of process design, development, planning, and manufacturing of integrated-circuit wafers. The CAFE architectural framework supports a wide variety of software modules, including both development tools and online applications. The key components of the CAFE architecture are the data model and database schema, the process flow and wafer representations, the user interface, and the application programming and database interfaces. All CAFE application modules store and retrieve persistent data through a common database interface layer. Interface wrappers provide seamless, transparent integration of external tools and packages which have their own internal data formats.<<ETX>>