HowTo: Create a date dimension with PDI (Kettle)
Alright... I've shown you how to build a PDI executable from SVN. Now we should use this, shall we? This question was discussed many times and Google will get you an insight. I had to discuss this myself at more than one occasion both in my projects and at conferences like TDWI's European Conference at Amsterdam. To cut this short: I think that a date dimension can offer you much more value than the database or your reporting tool can offer. Both know nothing about the sales seasons your business follows. Neither of them know about the fiscal year cycle you have to follow. And I doubt that many tools know when Easter Sunday is. All this and almost anything else you can think of will be handled by a date dimension. Like any good dimension our date dimension will have a key (ID) and lots and lots of attributes.
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