Efficient time series querying in Postgres

Question

I have a table in my PG db that looks somewhat like this:

id | widget_id | for_date | score |

Each referenced widget has a lot of these ite

Answer 1

Using your table structure, I created the following Recursive CTE which starts with your MIN(For_Date) and increments until it reaches the MAX(For_Date). Not sure if there is a more efficient way, but this appears to work well:

WITH RECURSIVE nodes_cte(widgetid, for_date, score) AS (
-- First Widget Using Min Date
 SELECT 
    w.widgetId, 
    w.for_date, 
    w.score
 FROM widgets w 
  INNER JOIN ( 
      SELECT widgetId, Min(for_date) min_for_date
      FROM widgets
      GROUP BY widgetId
   ) minW ON w.widgetId = minW.widgetid 
        AND w.for_date = minW.min_for_date
UNION ALL
 SELECT 
    n.widgetId,
    n.for_date + 1 for_date,
    coalesce(w.score,n.score) score
 FROM nodes_cte n
  INNER JOIN (
      SELECT widgetId, Max(for_date) max_for_date
      FROM widgets 
      GROUP BY widgetId
   ) maxW ON n.widgetId = maxW.widgetId
  LEFT JOIN widgets w ON n.widgetid = w.widgetid 
    AND n.for_date + 1 = w.for_date
  WHERE n.for_date + 1 <= maxW.max_for_date
)
SELECT * 
FROM nodes_cte 
ORDER BY for_date

Here is the SQL Fiddle.

And the returned results (format the date however you'd like):

WIDGETID   FOR_DATE                     SCORE
1337       May, 07 2012 00:00:00+0000   12
1337       May, 08 2012 00:00:00+0000   41
1337       May, 09 2012 00:00:00+0000   41
1337       May, 10 2012 00:00:00+0000   41
1337       May, 11 2012 00:00:00+0000   500

Please note, this assumes your For_Date field is a Date -- if it includes a Time -- then you may need to use Interval '1 day' in the query above instead.

Hope this helps.