Posted by Erland Sommarskog on 10/21/05 10:38

corey lawson (corey.lawson@ayeteatea.net) writes:
> So you add other fields to help identify different holidays, right?
> At the very least, Chicago celebrates Kasmir Pulaski Day (it's an
> official Chicago holiday, in that schools and city offices are closed.
> I'll refrain from making any derisive comments about Hizzoner Daley).

This far we have not had reason to care why there is a holiday. All we
care about is whether this is a day when the stock exchange and the
clearing houses are open. There might be need for changes further down
the road, but this model has served us well since 1992.

The bottom line is that different systems have different needs, and
believing that there is a universal defintion of a calendar that fits
all systems is a fallacy. Some systems have no need of a calendar at
all. Other systems only needs to cover the local customs, others need
to cover local holidays like those in Chicago. And ours need to work
only country level, but maybe one day we might have to move it to be
by market place and clearing house. Etc.

And since needs are different, one should not cram down a calendar table
down the throat of anyone who is asking.

> It's just so much easier working with a calendar table like this (theta
> joins work pretty dang good), so that for the person who asked, the DBA
> should be able to find SOMEWHERE in the database, even in the master
> database (gasp! shock! horror!). If done right, it'll be static for
> quite some time (years), and should be relatively obvious for a database
> geek to realize if it's getting near the end of time to extend it again.

Maybe there is one. May there isn't one. Maybe the DBA for political
reasons will not let use the table. Again, please stop cramming down
solutions down people's throat, when they clearly tell you that the
solution you have is not applicable!

--
Erland Sommarskog, SQL Server MVP, esquel@sommarskog.se

Books Online for SQL Server SP3 at
http://www.microsoft.com/sql/techinfo/productdoc/2000/books.asp

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