AIDA is a distributed data management (DDM) front-end system which runs on top of existing databases stored in different data management systems (DBMSs). It appears to the user to be a distributed DBMS, although many of the DBMS functions are actually provided by the underlying DBMS. It currently runs above three relational DBMSs, the IDM database machine connected to a VAX, Ingres on two Suns, and Mistress on a third Sun. One of the key components of the AIDA system is Mermaid which provides query optimization, networking, and system control. Mermaid required research into query optimization where the costs of operations on the different processors and DBMSs is variable, the network cost is variable, and capabilities of the different DBMSs is variable. We extended existing distributed query optimization algorithms to support replicated and fragmented relations. In this paper, we discuss our experiences with the development and testing of the Mermaid system and with the integration of Mermaid with the AIDA translator. We discuss the types of commands, the system controller, and our experiences with distributed debugging. Then we give the results of our initial performance tests.