[AccessD] Re: DatePart Question

Charlotte,

You are quite correct.  A date dimension table becomes useful
in a transactional system only when you have users that need
to create their own queries against the data and they are not
at the level to learn how to do date math.  Then, they are
wonderful.  Since I primarily work with large transactional
systems and data warehouses, I taught my Developer's Workshop
how to use warehousing techniques to create data marts to speed
up reporting in Access.  Once they learn the techniques, they
can be applied to any back-end database.

I do not know the bound/unbound issue, but unless we get exposure
to different techniques for doing things, we will stagnate as
developers.

Robert

At 10:42 PM 2/3/2004 -0600, you wrote:
>Date: Tue, 3 Feb 2004 14:38:05 -0800
>From: "Charlotte Foust" <cfoust at infostatsystems.com>
>Subject: RE: [AccessD] Re: DatePart Question
>To: "Access Developers discussion and problem solving"
>         <accessd at databaseadvisors.com>
>Message-ID:
>         <E61FC1D4B1918244905B113C680BEA8632C44A at infoserver01.infostat.local>
>Content-Type: text/plain;       charset="us-ascii"
>
>The essential difference is that the date dimension table is generally
>used in data warehouse applications, not in regular data entry
>databases.  They can be useful in the latter for reporting purposes
>only, but you can get by nicely if you've never had to slice and dice
>very large tables based on a bunch of date criteria.  Note that fact
>tables in a datawarehouse are usually not normalized in the same way as
>regular database tables either (they are commonly 1NF), so dimension
>tables give you flexibility that it's hard to get any other way.  Data
>warehousing may be slightly off-topic, but only because Access
>developers don't have to deal with it very often.  I have, so I can
>appreciate both sides of the discussion.
>
>Charlotte Foust
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: DWUTKA at marlow.com [mailto:DWUTKA at marlow.com]
>Sent: Tuesday, February 03, 2004 2:05 PM
>To: accessd at databaseadvisors.com
>Subject: RE: [AccessD] Re: DatePart Question
>
>
>Nothing personal, but I have to agree with Gustav's point of view.  I
>can see (and I believe he does too), where a table would help certain
>situations.  However, I know first hand, the extreme lack of
>understanding on how a date works.  I'm not saying you don't understand
>that, however, to a computer, it is MUCH faster for many functions, to
>just let the processor do a logic operation on a number, then to have it
>pull other data up, and compare that.  Holidays, etc, those require
>heavier logic, so a table could be faster (depending on the amount of
>data).
>
>I'm not knocking your approach.  But in my experience, I have never
>needed to do anything like that.
>
>We better be careful that this doesn't turn into another bound/unbound
>issue.
>
>Drew