Date Index?

[Stephen.M.Thompson]

Hi folks -

Question about secondary indexes.  How are people doing date indexes?    I have 
a date column in my tables in RDBMS that we use frequently, such as look at all 
records recorded in the last month.  What is the best practice for being able 
to do such a query?  It seems like there could be an advantage to adding a 
couple of columns like this:

                {timestamp=2013/01/08 12:32:01 -0500}
                {month=201301}
                {day=08}

And then I could do secondary index on the month and day columns?  Would that 
be the best way to do something like this?  Is there any accepted "best 
practice" on this yet?

Thanks!
Steve