Question

I have table data with columns start and End. The column start and end have the date and time in this format: 2012-04-06 07:43:05 . I need to do this: End – Start (for each row obviously) and add up all the resulting time. [ only time field subtraction is enough as the date is probably the same for both start and end]

Any easy way to do this?

Answer 1

I would probably approach this by converting the dates to unix timestamp using UNIX_TIMESTAMP() in MySQL, then it is easier to do calculations like these you want.

Something like:

SELECT
   SUM(UNIX_TIMESTAMP(`End`) - UNIX_TIMESTAMP(`start`)) AS time_sum
FROM
   data

This will get you a sum of all the differences in seconds.