Testing the executable application

Once you create the executable version of your application, test how it runs before proceeding with delivery. You may have already executed the application many times within the PowerBuilder development environment, but it is still very important to run the executable version as an independent application—just the way end users will.

To do this, you:

  1. Leave PowerBuilder and go to your operating system environment.

  2. Make sure that the PowerBuilder runtime libraries are accessible to the application.

    You can do this by verifying that the location of the PowerBuilder virtual machine and other runtime files is in your PATH environment variable, or you can create a registry entry for the application that specifies the path.

  3. Run the application’s executable file as you run any native application.

Tracing the application’s execution

To help you track down problems, PowerBuilder provides tracing and profiling facilities that you can use in the development environment and when running the executable version of an application. Even if your application’s executable is problem free, you might consider using this facility to generate an audit trail of its operation. For more information on tracing execution, see the PowerBuilder Users Guide.