What is a slot?

Question

When reading about SQL I've come across the term 'slot'. For example, in a DBCC error message you may get something like this which references slot 0:

Page (1:157), slot 0 in object ID 2121058592, index ID 0, partition ID 72057594038517760, alloc unit ID 72057594042515456 (type "In-row data"). Column "col2" value is out of range for data type "datetime". Update column to a legal value.

I'm pretty sure it's something to do with the physical location but I can't find a definition anywhere which gives its exact meaning.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

It's the ordinal corresponding to the record number for a given page. Slot 0 is the first record on a page. See this post by Michelle Ufford for a reference in context.