Merge overlapping date intervals

Question

Is there a better way of merging overlapping date intervals?
The solution I came up with is so simple that now I wonder if someone else has a better idea of how this cou

Answer 1

Here is a solution with just three simple scans. No CTEs, no recursion, no joins, no table updates in a loop, no "group by" — as a result, this solution should scale the best (I think). I think number of scans can be reduced to two, if min and max dates are known in advance; the logic itself just needs two scans — find gaps, applied twice.

declare @datefrom datetime, @datethru datetime

DECLARE @T TABLE (d1 DATETIME, d2 DATETIME)

INSERT INTO @T (d1, d2)

SELECT '2010-01-01','2010-03-31' 
UNION SELECT '2010-03-01','2010-06-13' 
UNION SELECT '2010-04-01','2010-05-31' 
UNION SELECT '2010-06-15','2010-06-25' 
UNION SELECT '2010-06-26','2010-07-10' 
UNION SELECT '2010-08-01','2010-08-05' 
UNION SELECT '2010-08-01','2010-08-09' 
UNION SELECT '2010-08-02','2010-08-07' 
UNION SELECT '2010-08-08','2010-08-08' 
UNION SELECT '2010-08-09','2010-08-12' 
UNION SELECT '2010-07-04','2010-08-16' 
UNION SELECT '2010-11-01','2010-12-31' 

select @datefrom = min(d1) - 1, @datethru = max(d2) + 1 from @t

SELECT 
StartDate, EndDate
FROM
(
    SELECT 
    MAX(EndDate) OVER (ORDER BY StartDate) + 1 StartDate,
    LEAD(StartDate ) OVER (ORDER BY StartDate) - 1 EndDate
    FROM
    (
        SELECT 
        StartDate, EndDate
        FROM
        (
            SELECT 
            MAX(EndDate) OVER (ORDER BY StartDate) + 1 StartDate,
            LEAD(StartDate) OVER (ORDER BY StartDate) - 1 EndDate 
            FROM 
            (
                SELECT d1 StartDate, d2 EndDate from @T 
                UNION ALL 
                SELECT @datefrom StartDate, @datefrom EndDate 
                UNION ALL 
                SELECT @datethru StartDate, @datethru EndDate
            ) T
        ) T
        WHERE StartDate <= EndDate
        UNION ALL 
        SELECT @datefrom StartDate, @datefrom EndDate 
        UNION ALL 
        SELECT @datethru StartDate, @datethru EndDate
    ) T
) T
WHERE StartDate <= EndDate

The result is:

StartDate   EndDate
2010-01-01  2010-06-13
2010-06-15  2010-08-16
2010-11-01  2010-12-31