The Date dimension is a well known construct in general data warehousing. In many cases, the data for a date dimension is generated using a database stored procedure or shell-script.

Another approach to obtain the data for a date dimension is to generate it using an ETL tool like Pentaho Data Integration, a.k.a. Kettle. I think this approach makes sense for a number of reasons:

• When you tend to use a particular ETL tool, you will be able to reuse the date dimension generator over an over, and on different database platforms.
• You won’t need special database privileges beyond the ones you need already. Privileges for creating tables and to perform DML will usually be available, whereas you might need to convince a DBA that you require extra privileges to create and execute stored procedures.

In addition to these general considerations, you can pull a neat little trick with Kettle to localize the data and format of the date attributes. I wouldn’t go as far as to say that this feature is Kettle specific: rather, it relies on the localization support built into the java platform and the way you can put that to use in Kettle transformations.