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

The idea is to simulate the scanning algorithm for merging intervals. My solution makes sure it works across a wide range of SQL implementations. I've tested it on MySQL, Postgres, SQL-Server 2017, SQLite and even Hive.

Assuming the table schema is the following.

CREATE TABLE t (
  a DATETIME,
  b DATETIME
);

We also assume the interval is half-open like [a,b).

When (a,i,j) is in the table, it shows that there are j intervals covering a, and there are i intervals covering the previous point.

CREATE VIEW r AS 
SELECT a,
       Sum(d) OVER (ORDER BY a ROWS BETWEEN UNBOUNDED PRECEDING AND 1 PRECEDING) AS i,
       Sum(d) OVER (ORDER BY a ROWS UNBOUNDED PRECEDING) AS j
FROM  (SELECT a, Sum(d) AS d
       FROM   (SELECT a,  1 AS d FROM t
               UNION ALL
               SELECT b, -1 AS d FROM t) e
       GROUP  BY a) f;

We produce all the endpoints in the union of the intervals and pair up adjacent ones. Finally, we produce the set of intervals by only picking the odd-numbered rows.

SELECT a, b
FROM (SELECT a,
             Lead(a)      OVER (ORDER BY a) AS b,
             Row_number() OVER (ORDER BY a) AS n
      FROM   r
      WHERE  j=0 OR i=0 OR i is null) e
WHERE  n%2 = 1;

I've created a sample DB-fiddle and SQL-fiddle. I also wrote a blog post on union intervals in SQL.