TIMESTAMPDIFF() usage - mysql

I am struggling making sense of the TIMESTAMPDIFF() function using MYsql
here is an example:
SELECT TIMESTAMPDIFF(minute,start_time,end_time) AS Duration
FROM exam_answers
LIMIT 200;
Can someone explain to me what this is doing and what the purpose of me using it is? is their easier code? is this commonly used in business settings?
Thanks.

All this is doing is running a calculation on two fields in your data. So the function is returning the difference between the second and third parameters in the units defined by the first parameter.
TIMESTAMPDIFF(DAY, '2011-12-10', '2011-12-20')
will return 10. Because there are 10 days between Dec 10th and Dec 20th. That value is retrieved as Duration (just an alias).

Related

Trying to pull Max date less than Date on the row

I know this is a tough one but I'm basically trying to say. Give me a service call and its completion date, then give me the Max date for all service calls where the date is less than the date of the service call I'm inquiring about.
Basically the end result I'm looking for is to say was there another service call on this piece of equipment that was within the last 30 days.
So as you can see in the image for say Asset 50698 service call 579032 we have a date of 11/9/2020 the call below that was 10/22/2020 which was less than 30 days. I want to somehow find a way to count how many service calls I have where this has occurred. Is this possible?
I think you're looking for a context operator In, ForEach or ForAll (in in this case)
Add a variable "MaxAssetDate" and assign it a Formula similar to the following based on your column headers.
=Max([Service Call Completion Date] In ([Asset ID];[Service Call])) In (Asset ID])
Then add this as a column. Provided you have a prompt filtering for a given asset or "date" this column will then show the max date for each service call of the same asset ID. Then add a new variable: ServiceCallDaysDiff: Then by using DatesBetween() with "MaxAssetDate" and ServiceCallCompletionDate and DayPeriod; =DatesBetween([ServiceCallCompletionDate];[MaxAssetDate];DayPeriod) you should get a number 0-X. Then add a filter based if the number is between 1 and 30 then you show those records, otherwise hide the rest; or do whatever logic is then needed.
Now if you're dealing with hundreds of thousands of records this isn't ideal as you're putting all the processing on the webi engine when it ideally would occur as an object in the database layer. However if you only have a few thousand records this should be managable.
To add a count of service calls...
add variable: ServiceCallsCount:
=Sum(Sum(If([ServiceCallDaysDiff]=0;0;1)) In ([AssetID]))
this will count the non zero day differents. Note this will extend beyond 30 so if you want to limit by 30 days adjust the if statement to zero out those not between 1 and 30.
This is but one approach: there may be simpler ways.

Why do two MySQL dates in 1582 appear to be the same but comparison result is false?

I know that Gregorian calendar started on Oct 15th 1582, and during the transition from Julian calendar, 10 days had been dropped.
When I'm doing this query:
SELECT STR_TO_DATE('1582-10-05', '%Y-%m-%d')
I'm getting this result:
1582-10-15 (the 10 days difference).
But when I'm trying to match between such dates I'm getting the original date (Oct 5th and not 15th).
For example:
SELECT STR_TO_DATE('1582-10-05', '%Y-%m-%d') = STR_TO_DATE('1582-10-15', '%Y-%m-%d')
I'm getting a false response, although you would have expected to get a true since Oct 5th actually count as Oct 15th, as we saw in the first example.
Anyone can explain what's going on here?
On documentation it is stated that, TO_DAYS and FROM_DAYS functions must be called cautiously because of the transformation you noticed. Additionally, when I inspect the source codes of MySQL, I realized that STR_TO_DATE uses similar methodology with these functions. As I understand, cutover dates are completely unsafe to store or apply operations. Documentation says; "Dates during a cutover are nonexistent.", too.
Also for the inconsistency between different servers I may have an explanation. I have 2 different machines which have MySQL installed in Istanbul, Turkey and Frankfurt, Germany. They have same setup excluding localisation settings. First one shows 1, the other one shows 11 for the date substraction query. It means (in my humble opinion) there is unexplained sections about calendar cutover & localisation on official documentation.
Please see the following results:
SELECT STR_TO_DATE('1582-10-05', '%Y-%m-%d');
# Result #1: 1582-10-15
SELECT DATE_FORMAT(STR_TO_DATE('1582-10-05', '%Y-%m-%d'), '%Y-%m-%d');
# Result #2: 1582-10-05
SELECT DATE_FORMAT(STR_TO_DATE('1582-10-15', '%Y-%m-%d'), '%Y-%m-%d');
# Result #3: 1582-10-15
SQL fiddle demo.
These indicate the problem lies in the way the 1582-10-05 date is displayed rather than how it is stored. Result #2 shows that if the DATE_FORMAT function is used instead to explicitly convert the date into the same string format then the input date is displayed. This also explains why the comparison query in the question returns false: Behind the scenes, the two stored dates are different.
As you've discovered, this quirk occurs for all dates between 1582-10-05 and 1582-10-14 inclusive, i.e. the range of dates that don't really exist: The implicit conversion to text for all of these gives a date 10 days after. So if for some reason there is a need to display dates in this range (perhaps questionable), a simple workaround is to always use the DATE_FORMAT function.

TIMESTAMPDIFF giving unexpected result

Why is
TIMESTAMPDIFF(MONTH, '2015-12-25', '2016-02-24')
giving me 1? I would expect 2016-01-25 to be 1.
My guess is that it is actually returning something like 1.999 months and it is being simply rounded down.
How can I work around this? Or is there another function to use.
I tried PERIOD_DIFF but it does not take into account days
PERIOD_DIFF(DATE_FORMAT('2016-02-24','%Y%m'),DATE_FORMAT('2015-12-25','%Y%m'))
According to the documentation, the unit for the result is an integer, in your case it will return the whole number of months between the two dates, which is one (as the second month is not yet completed).

SSRS - weekday name

any advice appreciated
I have as a column heading the expression =WeekdayName(weekday(fields!date.value))
This returns the day of the week, however, it is returning a day of the week one day in advance, eg when I put Monday's dates in the parameter it shows as 'Tuesday' in the report.
My question is can the above expression be tweaked to show the WeekdayName one day before, eg =WeekdayName(weekday(fields!date.value -1)) ? I tried this but got an error.
Thanks.
So you want to subtract one day from the your incoming date then you can use the
= DateAdd("d", -1, yourdateField)
This way you can subtract the any number of days from your date.
But did you try to see why it is giving the day of previous date. Do check the system date time or else check with the
=WeekdayName(weekday(Today()))
and see if it gives you the correct day of week for current date.
Weekday and weekdayname functions have both another optional argument for defining the starting day of the week.
Problem is the 2 functions don' t default this argument to the same value so depending on your server settings you should explicitly set the second argument of these functions.
No need to invoke a date function. As the weekday() function returns and integer you can offset the result and use the Mod operator to keep it in bounds:
=WeekdayName((weekday(fields!date.value)+5) Mod 7)+1)
The parenthesis are important to ensure the addition comes first.
Just for reference:
OP asked again because of the weekday offset and this is the correct provided solution.
=WeekdayName(weekday(Today())) gives me tomorrow
=WeekdayName(Weekday(Today(),FirstDayOfWeek.System))

DATEDIFF function in SQL Server - executes differently in different cases

I am using SQL Server and just identify one problem in my case.
I have used the DATEDIFF function as:
select datediff(dd,'1935-12-07','2010-03-02')/365.00 ---> 74.28
select datediff(dd,'1935-12-07','2010-03-02')/365 ---> 74
select datediff(yy,'1935-12-07','2010-03-02') ---> 75
If you can observe that If I try DATEDIFF with 'dd' then I get the difference as 74/74.28.
But If I use it with 'yy' I get the diference as 75.
Why this is so? Means Why the difference came as 75 as it nearly approximate to 74.
I need this both function in different cases. But as it is behaving differently I am facing a lot of problems.
Suggest me some solution to this.
Thanks.
First case = You're implicitly casting to a float, shows the correct result
Second case = You're implictly casting to an int, which rounds down as part of the conversion (Floor value)
Third case = You're not casting anything at all, and DATEDIFF() returns a signed int, which rounds up (Ceiling value)
Solution: Do whatever you want, but keep it consistent throughout your code.
The datediff function checks for the difference of the date part you have specified, so it is correct in saying the difference in the year part of the two dates is 75.
Or to word it as the folks at microsoft do, it counts the number of boundaries crossed of that datepart. There are 75 year-boundaries crossed between the two dates in your example.
Have a look at this msdn page, it explains how it is supposed to work.