Re: Application Trace Profiler

Hi Bryan

I'm wondering if there is a way that I can find an
API call that will safely listen for the OutputDebugString call and
display
the message to the profiler's screen.

There is, and you can.

You call DebugActiveProcess() to hook into the target process, and then go
into a loop calling WaitForDebugEvent(). If WaitForDebugEvent() returns True
then you have a debug event, and you can look for OUTPUT_DEBUG_STRING_EVENT.

In order to read the string output you will have to read the memory in the
target process and marshal it back to your trace process.

Have a look here:

http://www.codeproject.com/useritems/VB_Debugger2.asp

HTH

Charles


"Bryan" <Bryan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:A42038CF-FA0B-4474-88A5-5C56AD80C8BF@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Exactly, I'm thinking of a very simple profiler application that will
intercept the Trace statements of another running .NET application.

From what I've been reading so far, if there are no trace listeners
attached
to a running process the Trace messages are outputted using the
OutputDebugString API. I'm wondering if there is a way that I can find an
API call that will safely listen for the OutputDebugString call and
display
the message to the profiler's screen.

"W.G. Ryan - MVP" wrote:

Bryan:

I think I can help you out on this, but where would you want to review
the
information that you get back? Are you thinking of something like
building
your own "profiler' for your application, having something like the
console/output windows or something of that sort?
"Bryan" <Bryan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:5BE44C73-6FC4-45BC-B14F-0F7CC0FC041D@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Basically yes, I just want to monitor what is happening with the
application
with the Trace statements in the code. I'm not really looking for
statistics
with Perfmon, but rather key statements or checkpoints of the executing
code,
parameters, etc.. Take SQL Server Profiler as an example. You're able
to
see realtime executing SQL statements when running the profiler. I
would
like to replicate something similar to attach to "SomeApp" when it's
running
and view it's progress, especially for troubleshooting purposes.
Another
example, is Visual Studio's output window that captures Debug.Write()
and
Trace.Write() statements and displays the output to the window. Of
course,
I'm trying to do all this by taking advantage of the .NET framework
(which
I
can create my own TraceListener), but I would really prefer to capture
the
Trace statements without logging to a file or database; only capturing
the
output when the custom profiler is profiling the .NET application,
"SomeApp."

"W.G. Ryan - MVP" wrote:

Bryan:

I'm not sure I follow you. Let's say you have some App called SomeApp.
Are
you wanting to just attach to it and find out what's going on with it?
It's
going to need to have output of some sort to do this other than your
basic
Perfmon stuff (which is quite powerful). can you tell me a little
more
about what exactly you need to do? I'll do what I can from there.

Cheers,

Bill
"Bryan" <Bryan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:9DB8B703-702B-4353-A70C-C9943403F125@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Does anyone have an example of an application that can connect to a
running
process and capture Trace.WriteLine calls like in SQL Server
Profiler?
I
know that we can inherit from a TraceListener class to write to
files,
databases, etc..., but I would really like to attach to running .NET
processes and get the results without any logging and instead
capture
the
real-time results when troubleshooting.








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