COM+ sniffing/spying, is it possible?

Question

I'm writing a replacement for a Visual Studio Add-In which we've got from a third party. Their Add-In has one function which I'm having trouble replacing however. It interfaces with another program of theirs (which we still need) by starting it, telling it the PID of Visual Studio and letting the other program call back their Visual Studio Add-In via COM+.

So, question, how can I reverse engineer the conversation between the Add-In and the other app? I don't have the source for the third party Add-In/App but I do have the legal rights to do what I'm doing so reverse engineering isn't a problem.

Answer 1

Presumably since their add-in is COM+, you can determine the public interface. You would have to duplicate that in your add-in. Initially you could write a dummy add-in that just logs all the calls and parameters. That might be a start.

If you have the legal rights, another option may be to contact the third party for details/documentation.