Finding a count of rows in an arbitrary date range using Oracle - oracle

Question

The question I need to answer is this "What is the maximum number of page requests we have ever received in a 60 minute period?"
I have a table that looks similar to this:
date_page_requested date;
page varchar(80);
I'm looking for the MAX count of rows in any 60 minute timeslice.
I thought analytic functions might get me there but so far I'm drawing a blank.
I would love a pointer in the right direction.

Answer 1

You have some options in the answer that will work, here is one that uses Oracle's "Windowing Functions with Logical Offset" feature instead of joins or correlated subqueries.
First the test table:
Wrote file afiedt.buf
1 create table t pctfree 0 nologging as
2 select date '2011-09-15' + level / (24 * 4) as date_page_requested
3 from dual
4* connect by level <= (24 * 4)
SQL> /
Table created.
SQL> insert into t values (to_date('2011-09-15 11:11:11', 'YYYY-MM-DD HH24:Mi:SS'));
1 row created.
SQL> commit;
Commit complete.
T now contains a row every quarter hour for a day with one additional row at 11:11:11 AM. The query preceeds in three steps. Step 1 is to, for every row, get the number of rows that come within the next hour after the time of the row:
1 with x as (select date_page_requested
2 , count(*) over (order by date_page_requested
3 range between current row
4 and interval '1' hour following) as hour_count
5 from t)
Then assign the ordering by hour_count:
6 , y as (select date_page_requested
7 , hour_count
8 , row_number() over (order by hour_count desc, date_page_requested asc) as rn
9 from x)
And finally select the earliest row that has the greatest number of following rows.
10 select to_char(date_page_requested, 'YYYY-MM-DD HH24:Mi:SS')
11 , hour_count
12 from y
13* where rn = 1
If multiple 60 minute windows tie in hour count, the above will only give you the first window.

Answer 2

This should give you what you need, the first row returned should have
the hour with the highest number of pages.
select number_of_pages
,hour_requested
from (select to_char(date_page_requested,'dd/mm/yyyy hh') hour_requested
,count(*) number_of_pages
from pages
group by to_char(date_page_requested,'dd/mm/yyyy hh')) p
order by number_of_pages

Answer 3

How about something like this?
SELECT TOP 1
ranges.date_start,
COUNT(data.page) AS Tally
FROM (SELECT DISTINCT
date_page_requested AS date_start,
DATEADD(HOUR,1,date_page_requested) AS date_end
FROM #Table) ranges
JOIN #Table data
ON data.date_page_requested >= ranges.date_start
AND data.date_page_requested < ranges.date_end
GROUP BY ranges.date_start
ORDER BY Tally DESC

Answer 4

For PostgreSQL, I'd first probably write something like this for a "window" aligned on the minute. You don't need OLAP windowing functions for this.
select w.ts,
date_trunc('minute', w.ts) as hour_start,
date_trunc('minute', w.ts) + interval '1' hour as hour_end,
(select count(*)
from weblog
where ts between date_trunc('minute', w.ts) and
(date_trunc('minute', w.ts) + interval '1' hour) ) as num_pages
from weblog w
group by ts, hour_start, hour_end
order by num_pages desc
Oracle also has a trunc() function, but I'm not sure of the format. I'll either look it up in a minute, or leave to see a friend's burlesque show.

Answer 5

WITH ranges AS
( SELECT
date_page_requested AS StartDate,
date_page_requested + (1/24) AS EndDate,
ROWNUMBER() OVER(ORDER BY date_page_requested) AS RowNo
FROM
#Table
)
SELECT
a.StartDate AS StartDate,
MAX(b.RowNo) - a.RowNo + 1 AS Tally
FROM
ranges a
JOIN
ranges b
ON a.StartDate <= b.StartDate
AND b.StartDate < a.EndDate
GROUP BY a.StartDate
, a.RowNo
ORDER BY Tally DESC
or:
WITH ranges AS
( SELECT
date_page_requested AS StartDate,
date_page_requested + (1/24) AS EndDate,
ROWNUMBER() OVER(ORDER BY date_page_requested) AS RowNo
FROM
#Table
)
SELECT
a.StartDate AS StartDate,
( SELECT MIN(b.RowNo) - a.RowNo
FROM ranges b
WHERE b.StartDate > a.EndDate
) AS Tally
FROM
ranges a
ORDER BY Tally DESC