Luis Cazares (7/1/2016)
RonKyle (7/1/2016)
I don't like that idea because that way you need to join tables for simple queries restricted by dates.
To that I always reply that no user should be looking at the information in that manner. Only a developer would have to do this, and they should have no trouble making the join. It's just a simple join.
It's a simple join, but it's still additional work for the developer and the server.
I agree that users shouldn't be querying the tables.
Day dimensions are a pretty standard concept in datawarehousing, a developer working in a datawarehouse should be comfortable with the concept. They are also a very powerful tool for users who want to easily dissect data by more than just a date and at that point end up saving either the server a lot of work doing a lot of on the fly calculations or the developers a lot of work explaining to users why they have to manually enter every date range.