Slot is a word that describes several different things, from a bolt used to secure a door to a position on the reels of a casino game. The word is also often used to refer to a specific type of slot machine, especially one that has a particular theme or pays out winnings according to a table of rules. Many online casinos offer slots with a variety of themes, including classic symbols like fruits and bells. The paytable will give you information about the symbols and payouts for each.
Slot can also refer to a computer expansion card, a memory slot, or any other type of data container. It can also refer to the specific area of a motherboard where expansion cards are inserted and connected. A motherboard may have many slots, each of which has its own name. For example, an ISA slot is called the Northbridge and a PCI slot is known as the Southbridge.
There are two basic types of slots: scalar and periodic. A scalar slot holds a single numeric value that does not vary with time. A periodic slot holds a set of numeric values that repeat over a specified time period. For example, a periodic slot that contains monthly evaporation coefficients for a reservoir would repeat every month. Periodic slots can handle both regular and irregular timeseries, and can have either text or numeric column headings.
In addition to the normal display options (e.g., datetime selector and scroll buttons), periodic slots have special features for showing display compression and notes. They also have a button that opens a dialog for setting the reference value. Integer indexed slots are a variant of periodic slots that hold a range of values for a specific run index, and can be displayed in an SCT.
A scalar slot that is configured to Lookup has its row headers marked with a special icon and a question mark, and displays the value as a question mark in the dialog. When a scalar is configured to Interpolate, the row headers show only the portion of the date that changes from one row to the next. For example, in a periodic slot with a 1 Day interval, the row headers only display days.
A table slot is a way to store a table of data in the model. Table slots can contain a 2-Dimensional curve or surface, or they can have several unrelated sets, as in the case of the Elevation Volume table. A table can have as few as one column or as many columns as needed, and they can be appended or deleted in blocks. Table slots that are configured to interpolate must be reconfigured when the number of blocks changes. This is because they are used to store the result of multiple sets for a given duration, and the interpolated set must be sorted and stored in decreasing order for each duration. In addition, some tables may require that each row have a distinct value.