Whenever you save an object, such as a window or menu, in a painter, PowerBuilder stores the object in a library (a PBL file). Similarly, whenever you open an object in a painter, PowerBuilder retrieves the object from the library.
Application, component, and .NET targets can use as many libraries as you want. Libraries can be on your own computer or on a server. When you create a target, you specify which libraries it uses. You can also change the library search path for a target at any time during development.
For information about specifying the library search path, see “Specifying the target’s library search path”.
Every object is saved in two parts in a library:
Source form This is a syntactic representation of the object, including the script code.
Object form This is a binary representation of the object, similar to an object file in the C and C++ languages. PowerBuilder compiles an object automatically every time you save it.
