[AccessD] Re: Using Dates

Robert L. Stewart rl_stewart at highstream.net
Wed Feb 4 08:15:22 CST 2004


Hi Gustav,

The best that I can think of is something like processing and ETL 
(extract,transform,load) routine you run into a date 2/1/1003 that
was technically correct, but invalid because it should have been
2/1/2003.

Robert

At 10:42 PM 2/3/2004 -0600, you wrote:
>Date: Tue, 3 Feb 2004 20:42:30 +0100
>From: Gustav Brock <gustav at cactus.dk>
>Subject: Re: [AccessD] Re: Using Dates
>To: Access Developers discussion and problem solving
>         <accessd at databaseadvisors.com>
>Message-ID: <542496076.20040203204230 at cactus.dk>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
>
>Hi Robert
>
> > What I think he is saying is that in 99% of the cases, the regular date
> > dimension table will work.  In a few cases, where the date may be missing
> > and you want to get some kind of value for it, you cannot use the date
> > itself as the key, thus the surrogate.  The surrogate would be stored in
> > the fact tables (another data warehousing concept, for those that do not
> > know about them).  That way when you hit an invalid or null date value, 
> the
> > date dimension table would be able to handle it in a predefined way.
>
>I noticed this too and wondered. How can one "hit an invalid date"? Do
>dataware house people not validate data before storing them? A missing
>date may, of course, be accepted, but an invalid? Where would that
>come from?
>
>/gustav




More information about the AccessD mailing list