Question

I need a TSQL query which returns all seconds since a given begin date. I am going to use this to left outer join against another table to see how many bytes were downloaded each second. I am using Sql Server 2008.

Answer 1

I’m shooting from the hip here, but here’s a start:

DECLARE @STARTDATE DATETIME
DECLARE @ENDDATE DATETIME

SET @STARTDATE = '05/01/2010'
SET @ENDDATE = GETDATE()

-- Find the seconds between these two dates
SELECT DATEADD(SECOND, Number, @StartDate) AS N
FROM Numbers
WHERE Number < DATEDIFF(SECOND, @STARTDATE, @ENDDATE)

This assumes a table called Numbers, with a column named Number containing values from 1 up. The be able to get results for an entire month, you’re going to need to have values up to around 2.5 million. I’d keep the query down to perhaps a day, meaning the Numbers table can get away with values less than 100,000.

Here’s a great article on numbers tables: http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Advanced+Querying/2547/

Registration is required, but it’s free. If you do any serious SQL Server programming this site is quite useful.