Application compiled with PB2019 R2 is (much) slower than with PB2017

Hello,

We have an application that we have migrated from PB2017 to PB2019R2. Our users are complaining the application has become painfully slow. To quote one user:

> Even the most friendly, patient colleagues that have used XXX for many years are now sayings it’s not really possible to work like this.

We need to do something but it's really hard to profile or diagnose these kind of issues with PB as everything is pretty opaque. We have investigated network issues as users are running the application using a citrix client, but networking is fine. I went through an earlier thread on this forum (https://community.appeon.com/index.php/qna/q-a/compiled-2019-apps-slow) and tried to add the potentially missing DLLs about theme, but to no avail.

Here is how we compile the application (through our CI):

C:\Program Files (x86)\Appeon\AutoCompiler 19.0\pbc190.exe /d progxxx.pbt /o progxxx_c.exe /w y /f /m n /x 32 /bg y /p XXX /cp "My Company" /de "My Application" /cr "My Company Development" /v "19" /fv "1.0.19.10" /ge 0

What can we do? Do you have any suggestions on how to investigate this slowness?

Thanks for your insights

Arnaud Bailly Accepted Answer Pending Moderation

Monday, 29 June 2020 10:28 AM UTC
PowerBuilder
# 1

After a week spent comparing behaviour of our application on PB2017 and PB2019 it appears the reported slowness is not 2019-specific, but rather dependent on the state of the environment (network, database contention, ram, whatever).

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Chris Pollach @Appeon
Monday, 29 June 2020 18:41 PM UTC

Hi Armaud .. thanks - that is great news! Super glad that you finally located the real source of your performance issues. :-)

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Ken Guo @Appeon Accepted Answer Pending Moderation

Monday, 22 June 2020 09:39 AM UTC
PowerBuilder
# 2

Hi Arnaud,

I can’t reproduce the issue on my side. My test results show that it takes the same amount of time to compile using PBC (AutoCompiler) with both PB 2017 R3 and PB 2019 R2.

Here is my test information:

Client Info	Windows 10 64-bit, i7-7700, 16GB RAM
Test Case	PB Code Example	PB Code Example (Upgrade to PB 2019 R2)
PB Version	PB 2017 R3 Build 1915	PB 2019 R2 Build 2328
PBC Command	pbc170.exe /d "D:\Support\PB2017\Example App\PB Examples.pbt" /o "D:\Support\PB2017\Example App\examples.exe" /w y /f /m n /x 32 /bg y /p "PowerBuilder Enterprise Series" /cp "Appeon" /de "Appeon Product File" /cr "Appeon" /v "1,0,0,1" /vn "1.0.0.1" /fv "1,0,0,1" /fvn "1.0.0.1" /ge 0	pbc190.exe /d "D:\Support\PB2019\Example App\PB Examples.pbt" /o "D:\Support\PB2019\Example App\examples.exe" /w y /f /m n /x 32 /bg y /p "PowerBuilder Enterprise Series" /cp "Appeon" /de "Appeon Product File" /cr "Appeon" /v "1,0,0,1" /vn "1.0.0.1" /fv "1,0,0,1" /fvn "1.0.0.1" /ge 0
PBC Compile Time	78～80s	78～80s

I suggest that you first make sure that you are using the same code for both PB 2017 R3 and PB 2019 R2. And then make sure the PBC arguments are the same. Lastly, make sure you do the test on the same machine.

If you still see a big performance difference between the two, please submit a ticket to our Support Portal: https://www.appeon.com/standardsupport/newbug and provide your environment information, comparison results, and test case if possible.

Regards,

Ken

Comment

Arnaud Bailly
Monday, 22 June 2020 09:48 AM UTC

Thanks a lot for your reply, Ken, but the problem is not the compilation time, it's the execution time once code is compiled.

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Ken Guo @Appeon
Tuesday, 23 June 2020 08:47 AM UTC

Hi Arnaud,

Sorry that I didn’t understand your problem.

If it is the performance issue of the EXE, I suggest you:

1.In the same machine, use PB 2017 R3 IDE and PB 2019 R2 IDE to run your app separately and compare whether there are any performance differences.

2.Use PB 2017 R3 and PB 2019 R2 to compile an EXE separately. Use the same machine to run these two EXE and compare whether there are any performance differences.

3.Check whether there are any performance differences if you don’t use Citrix.

4.Can you locate the code which is causing this issue? Could you please provide a case for us for further analysis?

5.To better track this issue, I suggest you open a ticket in our support ticket system (https://www.appeon.com/standardsupport/newbug). Thanks in advance.

Regards, Ken

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Chris Pollach @Appeon Accepted Answer Pending Moderation

Friday, 19 June 2020 17:07 PM UTC
PowerBuilder
# 3

Hi Arnaud;

This might be a related performance issue that I just came across this week in ticket #4823. The PBVM is constantly looking for a DLL called "pbdynamictab190". Unfortunately, there does not seem to be a logical reason for this DLL and to make it worse, the "pbdynamictab190" DLL is not distributed with PB2019 R2. So at run-time, the PBVM is constantly issuing a "load" instruction to the O/S looking for this DLL. The PBVM does not care if the load fails though and then continues - but, this load searching is continuous.

While this constant overhead would be trivial on a locally deployed PB App EXE, I suspect that it could have a small to significant performance implication if the PB App EXE was installed on Citrix, run via RDP or run from a "shared" network drive. Sybase had the same issue in PB 11.0 where the PBVM was constantly looking for menu icons and issuing a load for the corresponding Icon DLL on every execution cycle (menu event). This had the same negative performance repercussion when run under Citrix, RDP, or from a Shared Drive.

Note that Engineering has now just been notified of this issue. Note that this might be contributing to your App's slowness problem. However, I thought that you might want to investigate this angle in your environment and advise.

Regards ... Chris

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Arnaud Bailly
Saturday, 20 June 2020 06:51 AM UTC

Apologies for my dumbness, but how do I access the ticket's information? I am not very familiar with PB either ;-) ?

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Arnaud Bailly
Saturday, 20 June 2020 06:56 AM UTC

OK, found it! And I have started using procmon so it seems I am doing the right thing. However, I could not find any trace of pbdynamictab190.dll in the procmon trace I have. Will try again...

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John Raghanti
Wednesday, 3 November 2021 19:40 PM UTC

We are on 2019 R2 build 2353. Is there any way to get pbdynamictab190.dll to try to stop the failing loads? We have a citrix environment where users have been complaining about slowness, but we can't find any root cause.

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Resolved Application compiled with PB2019 R2 is (much) slower than with PB2017