i am pretty new to AS2005 so this question may appear pretty naive.

i have a two tables - the product table and the provider table. the provider
table contains the following columns: an identity PK, a FK to the product
table, price, activation date and expiration date. i would like to find out
in a given period (could be month, year), how many providers there are for a
given product and what the average price is. the validity of a provider at a
given time is determined by its activation and expiration date, i.e. as long
as at the provider has an activation date before and an expiration date
after the starting date of the period, it is considered to be valid.

based on my limited knowledge of AS, i think it is appropriate to use it to
perform this analysis. the dimensions are product and time. one thought i
have is to create two attributes based on activation and expiration date. to
query the number of providers for a given month, the query will select the
range of activation date prior to this month and the range of expiration
date after this month. i haven't tried this yet, so i am not sure it is
going to work. my question is whether there is a more effective way to
construct the dimension and a more effecient way to perform the query. can
SCD be utilized somehow? or more fundamentally should AS be used at all?

thanks a bunch in advance!