During the build process, the PowerServer Toolkit actively scans the application code and reports PowerBuilder features that are not supported in PowerServer. This proactive detection is a deliberate feature: it surfaces incompatibilities at build time so that developers can fix them before deployment. If these issues are not addressed, the corresponding code will not behave as expected at runtime — the unsupported call may silently do nothing, return NULL, or be skipped entirely without throwing a visible error.
When
During the Build & Deploy process. The PowerServer Toolkit scans the application and lists detected unsupported features in the “Unsupported Features” output window. This is a build-time report, not a runtime error.
Symptoms
The PowerServer Toolkit “Unsupported Features” window lists affected objects, functions, or properties after the build. At runtime, the unsupported code may be silently ignored (no error shown), return NULL, or produce results that differ from the classic C/S PowerBuilder behavior — with no obvious error message to alert the user.
💡 Key characteristics to recognize
-
This detection is proactive and build-time only — the “Unsupported Features” output window is the primary place to review all flagged items; always check it after every build.
-
A feature that works perfectly in the classic C/S PowerBuilder app may be silently non-functional in the cloud app — unsupported calls are typically ignored or return NULL without throwing a runtime error, making them especially hard to catch through testing alone.
-
Not all unsupported features can be auto-detected — the Toolkit reports the ones it can identify statically; some may only surface through manual testing of the deployed app.
-
Consult the “Unsupported features that can be detected” section in the PowerServer Help for the definitive list; each entry includes the affected API and recommended alternative.
Example:
