Any support organization realizes that a large amount of data flows back and forth between the maintainers and the users of their products. This data often takes the form of problem reports and communication via electronic mail. gnats addresses the problem of organizing this communication by defining a database made up of archived and indexed problem reports.
gnats was designed as a tool for software maintainers. It consists of several utilities which, when used in concert, formulate and administer a database of Problem Reports grouped by site-defined problem categories. It allows a support organization to keep track of problems (hence the term Problem Report) in an organized fashion. Essentially, gnats acts as an active archive for field-separated textual data.