Patent ID: 8554594

Claim:
A method of assembling a machine readable description of an existing automated process from the exchange of digital messages between two or more services communicating across a heterogeneous messaging environment, the method comprising employing a computer, having a processor, data store, one or more computer-readable media, and memory, to execute instructions stored in the memory in order to cause the processor to perform the steps of: (a) observing a plurality of digital messages in a plurality of messaging environments; (b) filtering each digital message by comparing the service name of the digital message against a predetermined list of service names to be monitored; (c) identifying services consuming the messages where such services are not identified via the predetermined list of service names to be monitored; (d) publishing a tracker record for each message in a common format independent of the associated messaging environment, the tracker record comprising the message, a message direction indicating whether the message has been sent from or retrieved by a service, and a service name for the service that has sent or retrieved the message, (e) storing details of each digital message in a store by performing the steps of: (i) extracting a message type of the digital message using a predetermined query; (ii) extracting a unique identity of the digital message using a predetermined query, the unique identity comprising unique identifying information from a plurality of fields of the message; and, (iii) storing the digital message ordered by unique identity, timestamp for when the digital message was received or sent, service name, and message type, (f) processing the store of digital messages into a set of service execution path descriptions by performing the steps of: (iv) assembling by unique identity a time sequence of message type, message direction, and service name; and, (v) creating a service execution path description for each unique sequence of timestamp, message type, message direction and service name, and (g) processing the set of service execution path descriptions into the machine readable description for the existing automated process, wherein the existing automated process consists only of machine-to-machine interactions and the method is performed without alteration to any one of the digital messages, a messaging sequencing, the services, and an encoding of the production environment, and wherein the machine readable description describes all possible execution paths available to all digital messages exchanged across the heterogeneous messaging environment.