Does anyone know whether the ACCESSIBILITY parameter does anything in pb.ini for PowerBuilder Classic applications built using earlier versions of PowerBuilder, such as SAP PowerBuilder 10.5? If not, is there a similar method for disabling Section 508 accessibility features in older versions of the PowerBuilder Data Window?
Background:
My company has a Windows application developed on PowerBuilder, which has been randomly crashing when running in a new hosted environment. A message box appears, "A problem caused the program to stop working correctly. Please close the program."
The problem has been occurring in an environment running certain versions of Windows Server, Citrix VDA and Citrix Receiver. It does not occur on a native Windows workstation, and does not occur when run under a pure Remote Desktop Protocol.
Appeon Support have analysed our Windows crash dumps and have suggested that the issue can be resolved by turning of Accessibility features, as described here: ttps://www.appeon.com/developers/get-help/knowledgebase/powerbuilder-datawindow-hangs-temporarily-after-retrieve.html
We tried adding ACCESSIBILITY=0 to pb.ini, located in the same folder as our application's runtime executable, built using PB 2019. While I note that the application was previously "randomly crashing" - meaning that any testing without crashes is not 100% conclusive - we have not been able to crash the application with Accessibility disabled. Kudos to Appeon Support for suggesting this resolution.
Unfortunately, our application is currently built on a much older version of PowerBuilder. We tried the same parameter with our application built on PB 10.5, but crashes still occur.
Migrating to a later version of PB should always involve a comprehensive re-test of the application, which we don't have time to do right now. We will do so if we have to, but it would be faster if we knew if there was a way to disable the Microsoft Active Accessibility functionality - which, according to earlier PowerBuilder manuals, is supported by the PB 10.5 Data Window, but information is yet to be found on how to disable such functionality in PB 10.5.
just my advice.
We didn't try John's suggested solution, with our customer agreeing that it's a hack and they'd prefer to go with a solution supported by Appeon. (So for anyone reading this in years to come: we're not sure if removing or renaming PBACC105.dll would have worked.) Thanks again.