Calendar Table and Preceding Load

Here’s an example of a calendar table built with a series of preceding load statements. The preceding load technique isn’t essential – this calendar table could have been built with a set of resident tables – but it is a good illustration of preceding load where each level of the load is a major revision of the level below.

This example code comes from a loadscript where the earlier part of the script has already loaded 50 million rows of transaction data. This calendar table part runs in a few seconds. The client for this example uses a July through June fiscal year and I left in the calculations for fiscal month, fiscal quarter and fiscal year (they use a label like FY15/16 for fiscal year).

Remember to read the comments starting at the bottom since that is how the preceding load logic works. Note the Dual function used to make sure the fiscal months sort properly from July to June in charts.

//Calendar table is for all Monday WeekStart dates for the transaction data  
TBL_CALENDAR:
LOAD
FDATE,
Month(FDATE) as CAL_MO,
Year(FDATE) as CAL_YEAR,
dual(Month(FDATE),if(num(Month(FDATE))>6,num(Month(FDATE))-6,num(Month(FDATE))+6))  AS FISCAL_MO,
dual('FY' & if(num(Month(FDATE))>6,   right(Year(FDATE),2)&'/'&right(Year(FDATE)+1,2), right(Year(FDATE)-1,2)&'/'&right(Year(FDATE),2)),
   if(num(Month(FDATE))>6, right(Year(FDATE),2),right(Year(FDATE)-1,2))) as FISCAL_YR,
Pick(Month(FDATE),'Q1','Q1','Q1', 'Q2','Q2','Q2', 'Q3','Q3','Q3', 'Q4','Q4','Q4') as QTR,
Pick(Month(FDATE),'Q3','Q3','Q3', 'Q4','Q4','Q4', 'Q1','Q1','Q1', 'Q2','Q2','Q2') as FISCAL_QTR;
//
//now, make a complete set of FDATEs between min and max
//without missing any weeks. Autogenerate keyword not needed  
Load 
Date(MINFDATE+(IterNo()*7)) as FDATE
While MINFDATE+(IterNo()*7) <= MAXFDATE;
//
//get the minimum (oldest) FDATE and maximum (newest) FDATE
Load 
Weekstart(Min(FDATE)) as MINFDATE,
Weekstart(Max(FDATE)) as MAXFDATE;
//
//First, get all of the distinct FDATE values that have been loaded 
Load date(FieldValue('FDATE', RecNo())) as FDATE 
AutoGenerate FieldValueCount('FDATE');

I didn’t use it here but a WHERE clause will work with preceding load (WHERE EXISTS… is often useful) The ORDER BY clause seems to cause an error with proceding load but you can use logic like this example where the FDATE values are built and loaded in ascending order.

★★★