Role-playing dimensions in infiniDB?

Question

Since InfiniDB lacks views how would you get Date Dimension to play the role of "Registration Date" AND "Login Date" AND "Purchase Date" and so on...

(Normally you would create a view of date dimension posing as registration date but going against date dimension)

Answer 1

Dimensions play roles on the fact tables - why would you need a view at all? If you have a sales fact table, you might have a "Date Ordered" and "Shipping Date", each column is a role-playing dimension that connects back to your date dimension. The only case where I've needed to make views on a dim that acts as a role-playing dimension is when I'm forced to use a intermediate "BI" layer, and that tool doesn't properly allow you to connect multiple "dimensions" to the same base dimension table.

Answer 2

Depends what you're trying to achieve, you can't just do a

select * from date_dimension as login_date;

?

Personally I use Mondrian as an intermediate layer on pretty much everything which negates this issue, but it obviously depends largely on how you're interacting with the server. Views suck anyway.