Date Bucketing

Date bucketing is the segmenting of a given data set into "buckets", based on some date-based column value or expression within the set.


DATE_BUCKET

Date bucketing is accomplished through the use of the DATE_BUCKET function, which calculates the date range in which a given timestamp falls, based on a set of fixed-width "buckets", start-aligned to a date/time, and offset from that start date/time.

The basic form of the DATE_BUCKET function is:

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DATE_BUCKET(width, timestamp[, offset[, base]])
ParametersDescription
widthThe number of days each bucket should span. An INTERVAL can also be used to specify the width.
timestampA date/time column or expression, the date portion of which will be used in placing the corresponding record within the correct date bucket.
offsetThe number of days after (for a positive offset) or number of days before (for a negative offset) the base date/time to which the buckets should be aligned. An INTERVAL can also be used to specify the offset. The default is no offset.
baseThe starting date/time to which buckets will be aligned. The default is 2000-01-03.

Example

Typically, DATE_BUCKET is used in the following type of query:

DATE_BUCKET Example 
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SELECT
      DATE_BUCKET(7, ds, -3, '2023-02-21') + INTERVAL 3 DAYS AS week_midpoint,
      AVG(cpu) AS avg_cpu
FROM example.host_metrics_summary
GROUP BY week_midpoint
ORDER BY week_midpoint

The result will be as follows:

  • Dates in the ds column of the example.host_metrics_summary table will be grouped into buckets
  • Each bucket will span a range of 7 days
  • The baseline bucket will start at 2023-02-18 (2023-02-21 offset by -3 days) and continue through 2023-02-24 (7 days, including 2023-02-18)
  • Buckets will extend before & after the baseline bucket in contiguous, non-overlapping fashion
  • Each result record will show the date in the middle of the bucket's date range (+ INTERVAL 3 DAYS from the start of each 7 day span) and the average CPU usage across the records contained within that date range
  • Gaps in the data will not be filled in with empty buckets--only buckets containing the dates found in the ds column of example.host_metrics_summary will be returned in the result set