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I need to compute the sum of durations of multiple events based on consecutive values in another column.

             ts             | w
----------------------------+---
 2020-07-27 15:40:04.045+00 | t
 2020-07-27 15:41:04.045+00 | t
 2020-07-27 15:41:14.045+00 | f
 2020-07-27 15:42:14.045+00 | t
 2020-07-27 15:43:14.045+00 | t

The event is considered being active as long as the column w has a consecutive value of true.

The duration of the first event would be 60 seconds. '2020-07-27 15:41:04.045+00' - 2020-07-27 15:40:04.045+00. The second event has the same duration. The sum of both would be 120 seconds.

What would be the best/most performant approach to computing these values? The longest time range we'll be looking at will probably be half a year involving about 30 million rows.

I wrote a custom aggregate function that computes the duration but it takes about 16 seconds for only 1.5 million rows.

 Aggregate  (cost=444090.03..444090.04 rows=1 width=4) (actual time=16290.826..16290.828 rows=1 loops=1)
   ->  Seq Scan on discriminator0  (cost=0.00..57289.03 rows=1547203 width=9) (actual time=0.016..1723.178 rows=1547229 loops=1)
 Planning Time: 0.196 ms
 JIT:
   Functions: 3
   Options: Inlining false, Optimization false, Expressions true, Deforming true
   Timing: Generation 0.889 ms, Inlining 0.000 ms, Optimization 0.508 ms, Emission 6.472 ms, Total 7.870 ms
 Execution Time: 16291.836 ms

I'm new to SQL and basically just got this working through trial and error, so I'm sure there is room for improvement. Maybe even a whole different approach. Here's a fiddle with the aggregate function.

I'm not sure if i should include the code because it's quite long

1 Answer 1

1

Here is one idea that you might want to try:

select max(ts) - min(ts)
from (
    select ts, w
       ,   row_number() over (order by ts)
         - row_number() over (partition by w order by ts) as grp
    from test
) as t
where w
group by grp;

The idea is to enumerate ts in two ways, first the complete set, then per w and calculate the difference (called grp).

If the difference (grp) changes it means that w changed. We can, therefore, pick the max(ts) - min(ts) within each grp, for groups where w = true.

The problem you are trying to solve is often referred to as an "island and gap" problem. I modified your fiddle with my query: Modified fiddle

You can try and compare the performance with your function. You probably want to add an index like:

CREATE INDEX x1 on test (ts, w);

EDIT: to calculate the total duration in seconds:

select EXTRACT(EPOCH from sum(dur))
from (
    select max(ts) - min(ts) as dur
    from (
        select ts, w
          ,    row_number() over (order by ts)
            -  row_number() over (partition by w order by ts) as grp
        from test
    ) as t
    where w
    group by grp
) as tt;    

EDIT: I played around a bit more, see Updated fiddle, and added a bit more data (~ 70000 rows depending on the number of duplicates ). I can see that the results differ between queries, haven't examined that more closely though. But I'm a bit surprised that you say that the queries perform about the same. Looking at the plan for your query:

Aggregate  (cost=21650.65..21650.66 rows=1 width=4) (actual time=2389.576..2389.576 rows=1 loops=1)
  ->  Seq Scan on test  (cost=0.00..1190.40 rows=81840 width=9) (actual time=0.013..36.243 rows=68709 loops=1)
Planning Time: 0.097 ms
Execution Time: 2389.663 ms

and one with window functions:

Aggregate  (cost=18951.01..18951.02 rows=1 width=8) (actual time=163.179..163.179 rows=1 loops=1)
  ->  HashAggregate  (cost=18946.01..18948.51 rows=200 width=24) (actual time=160.594..162.306 rows=8447 loops=1)
        Group Key: t.grp
        ->  Subquery Scan on t  (cost=16183.91..18639.11 rows=40920 width=16) (actual time=106.327..146.336 rows=59271 loops=1)
              Filter: t.w
              Rows Removed by Filter: 9438
              ->  WindowAgg  (cost=16183.91..17820.71 rows=81840 width=17) (actual time=106.326..140.013 rows=68709 loops=1)
                    ->  Sort  (cost=16183.91..16388.51 rows=81840 width=17) (actual time=106.316..114.565 rows=68709 loops=1)
                          Sort Key: test.ts
                          Sort Method: external merge  Disk: 2296kB
                          ->  WindowAgg  (cost=7868.76..9505.56 rows=81840 width=17) (actual time=44.285..81.613 rows=68709 loops=1)
                                ->  Sort  (cost=7868.76..8073.36 rows=81840 width=9) (actual time=44.261..52.843 rows=68709 loops=1)
                                      Sort Key: test.w, test.ts
                                      Sort Method: external merge  Disk: 1288kB
                                      ->  Seq Scan on test  (cost=0.00..1190.40 rows=81840 width=9) (actual time=0.011..5.775 rows=68709 loops=1)
Planning Time: 0.224 ms
Execution Time: 164.052 ms

indicate that the latter is significantly more efficient

I'll see if I can spin up a container with Postgres and dump the data into a table and examine the different results

The index is probably not that useful since we are scanning the whole table anyhow.

Final edit:

I could repeat the diff with only 50 rows Fiddle, so I added the rows to a Libreoffice Calc sheet. It appears as if the window version and Libreoffice agrees on the result. For some reason, I got a negative number from your function. This may be due to that the first row is a single row. This is the data used in verification, perhaps you can just add a "t" row a couple of seconds before the first one to rule out errors due to a single row:

2020-07-27 15:55:37 t
2020-07-27 16:01:56 f
2020-07-27 16:09:17 t
2020-07-27 16:23:32 t
2020-07-27 16:28:47 t   00:19:30
2020-07-27 18:14:32 f
2020-07-27 18:30:26 t
2020-07-27 18:40:52 t
2020-07-27 19:01:18 t
2020-07-27 19:05:24 t
2020-07-27 19:16:16 t
2020-07-27 19:56:00 t
2020-07-27 20:34:05 t   02:03:39
2020-07-27 21:12:18 f
2020-07-27 21:58:53 t
2020-07-27 23:51:55 t
2020-07-28 00:42:24 t
2020-07-28 00:43:56 t
2020-07-28 01:15:08 t
2020-07-28 03:34:08 t
2020-07-28 06:20:28 t
2020-07-28 06:23:14 t
2020-07-28 06:30:51 t
2020-07-28 06:34:12 t
2020-07-28 06:38:41 t
2020-07-28 06:48:48 t
2020-07-28 07:49:39 t
2020-07-28 08:28:41 t
2020-07-28 09:32:42 t
2020-07-28 09:45:36 t
2020-07-28 09:57:46 t
2020-07-28 10:29:37 t
2020-07-28 11:53:21 t
2020-07-28 11:53:29 t
2020-07-28 11:54:35 t
2020-07-28 12:23:18 t
2020-07-28 13:10:48 t
2020-07-28 13:37:21 t
2020-07-28 14:22:14 t
2020-07-28 14:51:16 t
2020-07-28 14:52:12 t
2020-07-28 15:30:04 t
2020-07-28 16:34:43 t
2020-07-28 17:02:03 t   19:03:10
2020-07-28 18:11:49 f
2020-07-28 18:21:09 t
2020-07-28 18:41:38 t
2020-07-28 19:14:45 t
2020-07-28 19:16:01 t
2020-07-28 19:22:03 t   01:00:54

             Total      22:27:13        80833 seconds

Final edit 2:-)

I had a look at your function, and it appears as if you expect the rows to be ordered according to ts? If so, that is a false assumption since they may come in any order. If you do a simple test like:

SELECT ddur(ts, w) FROM (select ts, w from test order by random()) as t;

and compare with:

SELECT ddur(ts, w) FROM test;

the results are probably different. See Modified original Fiddle

5
  • Wow. Thank you very much for your answer! Much to learn. Unfortunately, your query yields a different result for the real database. Yours says 23951.061 and the aggregate 101450. I don't know which one is right as they return the same value in the fiddle. They both run in about the same time. 18s vs 16s. Any idea on how to debug the different results? Jul 27, 2020 at 22:29
  • Try to find a minimal set where they differ. You can for example add a predicate WHERE ts BETWEEN t1 and t2 AND try different values for t1 and t2. Did you add the index? Jul 27, 2020 at 22:36
  • Oh, BTW. Your test table allows for nulls. If your real table does as well you may want to check if null occurs as it may affect the result Jul 27, 2020 at 22:54
  • Perfect, that's what I'm doing. So far they produce the same result for the subsets tested. I added the index, but that didn't change the execution time. The table indeed allows for null values, but it doesn't contain any so far. Thanks again for the kind help. Jul 27, 2020 at 23:01
  • See my final edit 2, I think this explains the difference. Note that even without the subquery that tries to shuffle the rows, you will get non-determistic results, even though it appears to work for a smaller set of rows. Jul 28, 2020 at 9:53

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