A system and method are described for converting a circuit description into transaction-based description at a higher level of abstraction. Thus, a designer can readily view a series of transactions that occurred in the simulation of a circuit. In one aspect, the simulated signals are analyzed and converted into messages of a protocol used by the design. A combination of the messages represents a transaction. Thus, the simulated signals are then converted into a series of protocol transactions. In another aspect, a message recognition module performs the analysis of the simulated signals and converts the simulated signals into messages (e.g., request for bus, bus acknowledge, etc.). A transaction recognition module analyzes the messages and converts the messages into transactions (e.g., Read, Write, etc.). Using both the system and method the circuit description is converted into a higher level of abstraction that allows more comprehensive system-level analysis.