Troubles conceptualizing a query - mysql

Question

I have a 'Course' table and an 'Event' table.
I would like to have all the courses that actually take place, i.e. they are not cancelled by an event.
I have done this by a simple request for all the course and a script analysis (basically some loops), but this request take a time that I believe too long. I think what I want is possible in one query and no loops to optimize this request.
Here are the details :
'Course' c have the fields 'date', 'duration' and a many to many relation with the 'Grade' table
'Event' e have the fields 'begin', 'end', 'break' and a many to many relation with the 'Grade' table
A course is cancelled by an event if they occur at the same time and if the event is a break (e.break = 1)
A course is cancelled by an event if all the grades of the course are in the events that occurs at the same time (many events can occurs, I have to sum up the grades of these events and compare them to the grades of the courses). This is the part I'm doing with a loop, I have some trouble to conceptualize that.
Any help is welcome,
Thanks in advance,
PS : I'm using mysql
EDIT : Tables details
-Course
+-----------+-------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
| Field | Type | Null | Key | Default | Extra |
+-----------+-------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
| id | int(11) | NO | PRI | NULL | auto_increment |
| date | datetime | NO | | NULL | |
| duration | time | NO | | NULL | |
| type | int(11) | NO | | NULL | |
+-----------+-------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
+-------+---------------------+----------+------+
| id | date | duration | type |
+-------+---------------------+----------+------+
| 1 | 2013-12-10 10:00:00 | 02:00:00 | 0 |
| 2 | 2013-12-11 10:00:00 | 02:00:00 | 0 |
+-------+---------------------+----------+------+
-Event
+-------------+-------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
| Field | Type | Null | Key | Default | Extra |
+-------------+-------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
| id | int(11) | NO | PRI | NULL | auto_increment |
| begin | datetime | NO | | NULL | |
| end | datetime | YES | | NULL | |
| break | tinyint(1) | NO | | NULL | |
+-------------+-------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
+----+---------------------+---------------------+-------+
| id | begin | end | break |
+----+---------------------+---------------------+-------+
| 1 | 2013-12-10 00:00:00 | 2013-12-11 23:59:00 | 1 |
+----+---------------------+---------------------+-------+
-course_grade
+-----------+----------+
| course_id | grade_id |
+-----------+----------+
| 1 | 66 |
| 2 | 65 |
| 2 | 66 |
+-----------+----------+
-event_grade
+----------+----------+
| grade_id | event_id |
+----------+----------+
| 66 | 1 |
+----------+----------+
So here, only the course 2 should appear, because course 1 has only one grade, and this grade has an event.

Answer 1

I like riddles, this is a nice one, has many solutions, I think
As you say 'Any help is welcome', I give an answer altough its not the solution (and it does not fit into a comment)
I dont know, if you just want (A) the naked statement (over and out), or if you want (B) to understand how to get to the solution, I take (B)
I start with 'what would I change' before starting about the solution:
you are mixing date,datetime,start,end and duration, try to use only one logic (if it is your model ofcourse) ie.
an event/course has a start and an end time (or start/duration)
duration should (IMHO) not be a time
try to find a smallest timeslice for events/course (are there 1 sec events? or is a granularity of 5' (ie. 10:00, 10:05, 10:10 ans so on) a valid compromise?
My solution, a prgmatic one not academic
(sounds funny, but does work good in a simillar prob I had see annotation)
Create a table (T_TIME_OF_DAY) having all from 00:00, 00:05, .. 23:55
Create a Table (T_DAYS) in a valid and usefull range (a year?)
the carthesian product - call it points in time - (ie. select date, time from T_DAYS,T_TIME_OF_DAY no condition) of them (days x times) 300*24*12 ~ 100.000 rows if you need to look at a whole year (and 5' are ok for you) - thats not much and no prob
the next step is to join the curses fitting to your points in time (and the rows are down to <<100.000)
if you next join these with your events (again using point in time) you should get what you want.
simplyfied quarters of a day:
12 12 12 12 12 12 12 12
08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15
|...|...|...|...|...|...|...|...
grade 65 (C).............2..................
grade 66 (C).........1...2..................
grade 65 (E)................................
grade 66 (e)........1111..................
(annotation: I use this logic to calculate the availabillity of services regarding to their downtimes per Month / Year, and could use the already in timeslices prepared data for display)

Answer 2

(second answer, because it is a totaly different and mor3 standard aproach)
I made an SQLFiddle for you
so what to do:
and thats the a solution:
step one (in mind) select course,grades (lets call them C)
step two (in mind) select events, grades (lets call them E)
and - tada -
select all from C where there a no rows in E that have the same grade and the same date(somehow) and eventtype='break'
so your solution:
select
id, date start_time, date+duration end_time, grade_id
from Course c join course_grade cg on c.id=cg.course_id
where not exists (
select grade_id, begin start_time, end end_time
from event_grade eg join event e on eg.event_id=e.id
where
eg.grade_id=cg.grade_id
and e.break=1
and
(
(e.begin<=c.date and e.end >=c.date+c.duration)
or e.begin between c.date and c.date+c.duration
or e.end between c.date and c.date+c.duration
)
)
I did take no attention to optimize here