Flattening intersecting timespans

Question

I have lots of data with start and stop times for a given ID and I need to flatten all intersecting and adjacent timespans into one combined timespan. The sample data posted

Answer 1

Here is a recursive CTE solution, but I took the liberty of assigning a date and time to each column rather than pulling the date out separately. Helps to avoid some messy special case code. If you must store the date separately, I would use a view of CTE to make it look like two datetime columns and go with this approach.

create test data:

create table t1 (d1 datetime, d2 datetime)

insert t1 (d1,d2)
    select           '2009-06-03 10:00:00', '2009-06-03 14:00:00'
    union all select '2009-06-03 13:55:00', '2009-06-03 18:00:00'
    union all select '2009-06-03 17:55:00', '2009-06-03 23:00:00'
    union all select '2009-06-03 22:55:00', '2009-06-04 03:00:00'

    union all select '2009-06-04 03:05:00', '2009-06-04 07:00:00'

    union all select '2009-06-04 07:05:00', '2009-06-04 10:00:00'
    union all select '2009-06-04 09:55:00', '2009-06-04 14:00:00'

Recursive CTE:

;with dateRanges (ancestorD1, parentD1, d2, iter) as
(
--anchor is first level of collapse
    select
        d1 as ancestorD1,
        d1 as parentD1,
        d2,
        cast(0 as int) as iter
    from t1

--recurse as long as there is another range to fold in
    union all select
        tLeft.ancestorD1,
        tRight.d1 as parentD1,
        tRight.d2,
        iter + 1  as iter
    from dateRanges as tLeft join t1 as tRight
        --join condition is that the t1 row can be consumed by the recursive row
        on tLeft.d2 between tRight.d1 and tRight.d2
            --exclude identical rows
            and not (tLeft.parentD1 = tRight.d1 and tLeft.d2 = tRight.d2)
)
select
    ranges1.*
from dateRanges as ranges1
where not exists (
    select 1
    from dateRanges as ranges2
    where ranges1.ancestorD1 between ranges2.ancestorD1 and ranges2.d2
        and ranges1.d2 between ranges2.ancestorD1 and ranges2.d2
        and ranges2.iter > ranges1.iter
)

Gives output:

ancestorD1              parentD1                d2                      iter
----------------------- ----------------------- ----------------------- -----------
2009-06-04 03:05:00.000 2009-06-04 03:05:00.000 2009-06-04 07:00:00.000 0
2009-06-04 07:05:00.000 2009-06-04 09:55:00.000 2009-06-04 14:00:00.000 1
2009-06-03 10:00:00.000 2009-06-03 22:55:00.000 2009-06-04 03:00:00.000 3