TBL Files

[Robert Collins]

What is a .TBL file. Do I need to include it as part of the project and if yes how do I do that?

[sluggy]

.TBL, or do you mean .TLB??

[Robert Collins]

.TBL, or do you mean .TLB??

Oops! I meant .TLB

[sluggy]

.TLBs are type libraries, they contain all the metadata about COM servers (dlls). An application can bind to (import) a tlb in order to access that metadata, it will give you access to things like the enumerations used, the interface definitions, etc etc. They are especially handy during design time if you are dynamically binding (late binding) to COM components at run time, without that tlb you wouldn't be able to get intellisense while coding, and you wouldn't get design time type checking.
All COM dlls already have the tlb embedded in them, there is an app that comes with PlatformSDK which you can use to extract the tlb. TLBs can also be fun to write, but it is hard to find a good MIDL reference so that you can utilise the full power of the language (at least it was hard to find a good reference when i last coded a tlb about 4 years ago).