Abstract
As a first step toward the development of a general grammatical inference (GI) software environment, GIFSA represents an integrated system for inferring finite state automata (FSA). Using the unified modeling language (UML), GIFSA offers a continuously upgradable software system initially implementing two AI-based algorithms, namely the tabu search method and the minimum description length (MDL) principle. For portability reasons, Java T programming language is used for development, enhanced by a friendly graphical user interface (GUI).