These are not general-purpose network tools that might help to identify, for example, a noisy network card. Their domain is database software.
Sniffers are network monitoring tools, while the spy programs are client-side tools.
Windows spy programs trace the functions that a program calls, includi ng parameters, status returns and other events. To debug or tune problem applications and queries, a programmer often compares expected versus actual behavior. When combined with the performance monitor at the server, these tools permit a programmer to monitor an application's behavior at the server, at the client and over the network. These tools also provide a semantic analysis of function calls to identify poor programming practices, replaying scripts captured at remote sites, testing software where a specific driver or database is not available, analyzing queries to issue preemptive warnings of long-running queries. You can also use these tools for timing the execution of stored procedures versus executing SQL statements, identifying client applications with deficient SQL and performing regression tests to ensure backward compatibility of new software releases.