The calendar date dimensions is maybe the most common dimension in a data warehouse. Sometimes calendars are pretty simple and only contain values such as Year, Month, or Date and some additional format variations like Month-Year, or Quarter-Year. But, other times you could need additional information such as fiscal year or holidays. The Custom Calendar Generator is an application that can be used to create QVDs with calendar information. It has been designed to add holidays, and fiscal period.
The calendar generated can be reused across applications. For instance, you can generate one containing ten years, and then when loading your data model, get the maximum and minimum dates in your fact table and use them to filter your calendar. The benefits of following this practice is that you save time coding (if you were used to create a master calendar script per project) and processing time (again, if you have one script per project). And also, regarding maintenance you just have to worry about one file.
You can download here the script, I have also added a guideline about how to use it. Finally, if you have any question or opinion about the Calendar Generator feel free to add your comments. Feedback is very welcomed.
No comments:
Post a Comment