From Network Traces to System Responses: Opaquely Emulating Software Services

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel method for emulating enterprise software services by enhancing record-and-replay accuracy through sequence alignment and message matching techniques, achieving over 99% accuracy without prior service knowledge.

Contribution

The paper presents a new technique that improves record-and-replay emulation accuracy using sequence alignment and message prototype matching, eliminating the need for detailed service models.

Findings

Achieved over 99% accuracy in emulating four enterprise messaging protocols.

Enhanced message matching with a modified Needleman-Wunsch algorithm and entropy-based weightings.

Improved emulation fidelity without requiring prior knowledge of target services.

Abstract

Enterprise software systems make complex interactions with other services in their environment. Developing and testing for production-like conditions is therefore a challenging task. Prior approaches include emulations of the dependency services using either explicit modelling or record-and-replay approaches. Models require deep knowledge of the target services while record-and-replay is limited in accuracy. We present a new technique that improves the accuracy of record-and-replay approaches, without requiring prior knowledge of the services. The approach uses multiple sequence alignment to derive message prototypes from recorded system interactions and a scheme to match incoming request messages against message prototypes to generate response messages. We introduce a modified Needleman-Wunsch algorithm for distance calculation during message matching, wildcards in message prototypes for high variability sections, and entropy-based weightings in distance calculations for increased accuracy. Combined, our new approach has shown greater than 99% accuracy for four evaluated enterprise system messaging protocols.