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October 29

Help with an url

Hello, I need to find the correct link to be able to reference a series of articles based on their profile on the 2023 Pan American Games website. For example, for the swimmer Coby Carrozza (reference number 5), the correct url is: https://results-santiago2023.org/#/participants/athletes?bio=SWM.11435021 (https://results-santiago2023.org/#/medals/search?&bio=SWM.3478795), but I put it in the article and when I click on it, it redirects to the general page (not to the swimmer's file). How can the URL be manipulated so that when adding it in the article as a reference it opens exactly the athlete's file? I appreciate your ideas. Leonprimer (talk) 18:37, 29 October 2023 (UTC)

Unfortunately, it seems that Bornan (the company that implemented that competition's results systems) use software that queries their database asynchronously (using the URL parameters you describe) which returns a (proprietary format) object that is rendered (client side) using JavaScript. They haven't implemented a stable HTML-only query service nor a no-javascript fallback option (which also means the Wayback machine isn't helpful) - at least not that I can find. Given that this event includes a parasport element, one might think particular effort would have been put into its accessibility, which often means a plain-text-and-links-html site, but if that exists, I can't find it. -- Finlay McWalter··–·Talk 19:07, 29 October 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for the answer. So means it, that regardless of the configuration used by the developer, we do not have any way to manipulate the url so that it shows the file of each athlete open in a window with its respective url instead of the popup form as shown, isn't it?

@Finlay McWalter:, I have a similar case: the url https://www.usaswimming.org/meet-the-team/national-team-roster, is there a way to find the identifier code of each athlete?, to use it for reference (now clicking on "View Bio" of each athlete opens a window but without changing the url). All the best. Leonprimer (talk) 23:40, 29 October 2023 (UTC)

No, I don't think you can find a static URL (that returns HTML, which is what you need) for either of these. The second one is similar (but different); it's also an AJAX download for each person (the second works differently - it submits a form with an HTTP POST, and gets an HTML fragment response, which its javascript then inserts into the page). -- Finlay McWalter··–·Talk 10:58, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

October 30

How does Microsoft Word and Excel store data?

I mean, is it stored in arrays, or linked lists? Or binary trees, etc. And how about for simpler applications like Wordpad and Notepad? 170.76.231.162 (talk) 18:09, 30 October 2023 (UTC).

It looks like it uses Office_Open_XML format. RudolfRed (talk) 18:39, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

And that probably means that internally it represents documents as trees, similar to the Document Object Model of HTML documents. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 21:52, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

We can't really know without looking at the source code, and as these applications are closed source, I wouldn't expect a definitive answer here on Wikipedia. Or you have to reverse engineer it from a memory dump.

For Microsoft Word and Excel, the documents may be internally represented in a way similar to the original .doc and .xls file formats of 30 years ago, instead of the more modern xml-based formats. The people at LibreOffice and precursors have done a decent job at reverse engineering that format, so you might find some details there. For a text editor like Notepad, dealing just with plain text, there are many ways to do this. One needs a compromise between easy deletion or insertion of characters, easy jumping over many characters and memory use. For applications that have been around for decades, memory use may have been more important than today. PiusImpavidus (talk) 09:30, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

I don't work with Word. For Excel, you can easily see how it stores data. The xlsx file is a basic zip file. So, unzip it. You will see folders. Go into xl. You will see sharedStrings.xml, which are values shared among sheets. Go into worksheets and there is an xml file for each sheet. The format is easy to look through. The basic concept is that values are stored in a table of values, each with an index. The cells in the spreadsheet are given an index, which is looked up to get the value when it is displayed. You can also see how styles are applied in the styles.xml file. Overall, Excel is a collection of XML files all zipped up. 12.116.29.106 (talk) 13:03, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

November 5

Microsoft SQL Server

I need to purchase a new piece of software - Microsoft SQL Server. I am thinking about Standard for $620.[1] I do have an SQL Server now, I installed it many years ago from a MS website for "free." Sort of. I had the right to do so because I bought a "training" program from MS. It cost over a thousand dollars. I made a full use of it over the years. This program had a name which I forgot. It had time limit - 1 year and could be used for training only. I could download any MS software if I was a member of that "club." No commercial uses. After a few years I stopped paying for renewal. I called MS and asked if I still could use SQL. They said OK. I built a wonderful database on it with the help of Visual Studio. I still use it every day.

Recently I bought a more powerful Dell computer and I want to install a new SQL Server in it. I cannot use the one I have, because with the new computer my work might evolve in the direction of commercial usage. I checked what MS offers and got confused. There are so many variants!. I think about using it on a website which is in development. I will be the only user, but visitors could pull data from the SQL Server. Is it still the situation with One user?

I am sure there are experts out there, who know what MS offers better. I would appreciate a brief consultation. Thanks, - AboutFace 22 (talk) 20:41, 5 November 2023 (UTC)