Generate a row per minute of the day from a sparsely populated database table

Question

I have a table populated with time stamped rows inserted at (essentially) random point in the day.

I need to generate running totals with 1 row per minute (so for a

Answer 1

Make sure the date column has an index on it and performance should be reasonable.

SELECT t.Date,
COUNT(*) AS Quantity,
(SELECT COUNT(*) FROM Table WHERE Date < t.Date) AS RunningTotal
FROM Table t
GROUP BY t.Date

Getting a table populated with one row per minute can be done extremely quickly as follows:

DECLARE @StartDate smalldatetime
DECLARE @EndDate smalldatetime

SET @StartDate = '1 jan 2009' --MIN(TimeStamp) FROM Table
SET @EndDate = '2 jan 2009' --MAX(TimeStamp) FROM Table

SET @StartDate = DATEADD(minute,-DATEPART(minute,@StartDate),@StartDate)
SET @EndDate = DATEADD(minute,-DATEPART(minute,@EndDate),@EndDate)


; WITH DateIntervalsCTE AS
(
SELECT 0 i, @startdate AS Date
UNION ALL
SELECT i + 1, DATEADD(minute, i, @startdate )
FROM DateIntervalsCTE 
WHERE DATEADD(minute, i, @startdate ) <= @enddate
)
SELECT DISTINCT Date FROM DateIntervalsCTE
OPTION (MAXRECURSION 32767);

Provided you only need < ~22 days worth of data due to recursion restrictions.

All you need now is to merge the two, using a temp table to hold data seems to be quickest

DECLARE @StartDate smalldatetime
DECLARE @EndDate smalldatetime
DECLARE @t TABLE (Date smalldatetime,Quantity int,RunningTotal int)
SET @StartDate = '1 jan 2009' --MIN(TimeStamp) FROM Table
SET @EndDate = '2 jan 2009' --MAX(TimeStamp) FROM Table

SET @StartDate = DATEADD(minute,-DATEPART(minute,@StartDate),@StartDate)
SET @EndDate = DATEADD(minute,-DATEPART(minute,@EndDate),@EndDate)


; WITH DateIntervalsCTE AS
(
SELECT 0 i, @startdate AS Date
UNION ALL
SELECT i + 1, DATEADD(minute, i, @startdate )
FROM DateIntervalsCTE 
WHERE DATEADD(minute, i, @startdate ) <= @enddate
)
INSERT INTO @t (Date) 
SELECT DISTINCT Date FROM DateIntervalsCTE
OPTION (MAXRECURSION 32767);

UPDATE t SET Quantity = (SELECT COUNT(d.TimeStamp) FROM Table d WHERE Date = t.date)
from @t t

update t2 set runningtotal = (SELECT SUM(Quantity) FROM @t WHERE date <= t2.date)
from @t t2

select * from @t