Advances in storage technology have led to a dramatic increase in the volume of data stored on computer systems. Using a generic visualisation framework, we have developed a data classification scheme that creates an object-orientated data model. This data model is used in an agent-based visualisation architecture to address the problems of data management and visual representations. As part of an ongoing research project we have implemented DIME (Distributed Information in a Multi-agent Environment), a visualisation system based on this approach.