many queries are by week, month or quarter when the base table date is either date
or timestamp
.
in general, in group by
queries, does it matter whether using
- functions on the date
- a day
table that has extraction pre-calculated
note: similar question as DATE lookup table (1990/01/01:2041/12/31)
for example, in postgresql
create table sale(
tran_id serial primary key,
tran_dt date not null default current_date,
sale_amt decimal(8,2) not null,
...
);
create table days(
day date primary key,
week date not null,
month date not null,
quarter date non null
);
-- week query 1: group using funcs
select
date_trunc('week',tran_dt)::date - 1 as week,
count(1) as sale_ct,
sum(sale_amt) as sale_amt
from sale
where date_trunc('week',tran_dt)::date - 1 between '2012-1-1' and '2011-12-31'
group by date_trunc('week',tran_dt)::date - 1
order by 1;
-- query 2: group using days
select
days.week,
count(1) as sale_ct,
sum(sale_amt) as sale_amt
from sale
join days on( days.day = sale.tran_dt )
where week between '2011-1-1'::date and '2011-12-31'::date
group by week
order by week;
to me, whereas the date_trunc()
function seems more organic, the the days
table is easier to use.
is there anything here more than a matter of taste?