Posted by dmcmunn on 09/30/93 12:00

On Dec 24 2007, 2:33 pm, Ed Murphy <emurph...@socal.rr.com> wrote:
> jefftyzzer wrote:
> > I suppose that when you then join the fact to thetimedimension, you
> > could apply a COALESCE to the date column, e.g.,
> > COALESCE(time_dim.date, 'Date not Available').
>
> Don't you have to CAST or CONVERT time_dim.date to CHAR or VARCHAR
> first, lest it try and fail to convert 'Date not Available' to
> DATETIME instead?

Please consider a web page I maintain dedicated to providing the
building blocks for kick starting a date dimension: http://www.ipcdesigns.com/dim_date/
All of the information is free including free downloads of scripts to
build a date dimension from scratch or download one that is pre-built.
If you find the downloads helpful, please leave a comment. You don't
even have to register, but I do appreciate feedback. There are also
other free tool kits for data profiling and one for ETL metadata
management should be ready by February 1, 2008. Best of luck, Don
McMunn

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