SQL Calendar Tables As promised in my Calendar Dimension article, today I’m providing SQL calendar tables. I’m maintaining these in a GitHub project with my SQL calendar scripts. There’s a set for MS SQL Server and Postgres. You’ll also find the Power Query scripts for my Pivot Calendar in there. This article is about the SQL scripts, though. The scripts produce two tables–cal_actual and cal_fiscal_445. Particularly for the 445 calendar, you’ll want to look at the options you can set to control

I’ve wanted to use Contoso in Postgres for years but never found a project that ported it. I decided to do it myself so I could create a development environment that was portable, open source, and shareable. It turned out to be more of an undertaking than expected, but it was fun. I don’t plan to write a detailed step-by-step of the process, but I have outlined some bullet points below.

Today I’m showing you my Dim Time table with flexible minute granularity. I have both DAX and Power Query versions. Best Practices for Power BI dictate that dates and times be in separate columns. This lowers the cardinality of both the dates and times and makes the model more efficient. I prefer my Time dimension as a DAX-generated table, but having the Power Query version is handy if you need to mash it up with other data.

Calendar tables are possibly my favorite topic in the world of data modeling. I am obsessed with the pursuit of the perfect calendar. Perhaps this is because time is such a powerful and sometimes difficult dimension to master. Just when you think you have it all figured out, some intrepid user throws you a curve ball like deciding they need reporting with all Tuesdays aligned. One thing I know for certain is a good calendar table can solve a lot of problems, and it will be much easier for members of a team to work on each others reports if everyone uses the same calendar and follows some standard practices.

This post describes how I set up the environment I use for Power BI development. My environment is zero-cost as to software and includes data similar to what you will encounter in a corporate environment. These instructions are intended for someone who has familiarity with these tools in a professional capacity already and is just looking to get their own environment set up. That said, none of this is complicated. If you’re willing to give it a go without step-by-step instructions, you’ll probably figure it out.