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I'm investigating whether it is feasible to be able to learn a system interface by watching network traffic (assuming the usual problems are solved e.g. encryption etc)

I haven't been able to find any literature on this - but there might be a cross-discipline piece of work which could assist.

The main purpose here would be to allow complex enterprise systems to be refactored independently. A simple replay of data doesn't always work because we want to learn the request-response interface - though e.g. something like a market trade having multiple fills is an example of very complex orchestration that might make the whole thing unpractical.

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A classical result from automaton theory shows that even the problem of finding minimum-size DFA consistent with given positive and negative samples is NP-hard. This was shown by Gold in 1978. Your problem is much harder, as in practice you would have to learn data relationships in addition to any finite-state control of the system interface.

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  • $\begingroup$ thanks - I thought that would be the case. It might be possible to add hints or to fine tune a manually developed prototype mock. $\endgroup$
    – velniukas
    Aug 14, 2012 at 0:50
  • $\begingroup$ Additionally, if you watch network traffic but are not allowed to generate it you get only positive samples... :D $\endgroup$
    – antti.huima
    Aug 14, 2012 at 7:26

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