Subqueries and AVG() on a subtraction - sql

Question

Working on a query to return the average time from when an employee begins his/her shift and then arrives at the first home (this DB assumes they are salesmen).
What I have:
SELECT l.OFFICE_NAME, crew.EMPLOYEE_NAME, //avg(first arrival time)
FROM LOCAL_OFFICE l, CREW_WORK_SCHEDULE crew,
WHERE l.LOCAL_OFFICE_ID = crew1.LOCAL_OFFICE_ID
You can see the AVG() command is commented out, because I know the time that they arrive at work, and the time they get to the first house, and can find the value using this:
(SELECT MIN(c.ARRIVE)
FROM ORDER_STATUS c
WHERE c.USER_ID = crew.CREW_ID)
-(SELECT START_TIME
FROM CREW_SHIFT_CODES
WHERE WORK_SHIFT_CODE = crew.WORK_SHIFT_CODE)
Would the best way be to simply put the above into the the AVG() parentheses? Just trying to learn the best methods to create queries. If you want more info on any of the tables, etc. just ask, but hopefully they're all named so you know what they're returning.

Answer 1

As per my comment, the example you gave would only return one record to the AVG function, and so not do very much.
If the sub-query was returning multiple records, however, your suggestion of placing the sub-query inside the AVG() would work...
SELECT
AVG((SELECT MIN(sub.val) FROM sub WHERE sub.id = main.id GROUP BY sub.group))
FROM
main
GROUP BY
main.group
(Averaging a set of minima, and so requiring two levels of GROUP BY.)
In many cases this gives good performance, and is maintainable. But sometimes the sub-query grows large, and it can be better to reformat it using an inline view...
SELECT
main.group,
AVG(sub_query.val)
FROM
main
INNER JOIN
(
SELECT
sub.id,
sub.group,
MIN(sub.val) AS val
FROM
sub
GROUP BY
sub.id
sub.group
)
AS sub_query
ON sub_query.id = main.id
GROUP BY
main.group
Note: Although this looks as though the inline view will calculate a lod of values that are not needed (and so be inefficient), most RDBMS optimise this so only the required records get processes. (The optimiser knows how the inner query is being used by the outer query, and builds the execution plan accordingly.)

Answer 2

Don't think of subqueries: they're often quite slow. In effect, they are row by row (RBAR) operations rather than set based
join all the table together
I've used a derived table to calculate the 1st arrival time
Aggregate
Soemthing like
SELECT
l.OFFICE_NAME, crew.EMPLOYEE_NAME,
AVG(os.minARRIVE - cs.START_TIME)
FROM
LOCAL_OFFICE l
JOIN
CREW_WORK_SCHEDULE crew On l.LOCAL_OFFICE_ID = crew1.LOCAL_OFFICE_ID
JOIN
CREW_SHIFT_CODES cs ON cs.WORK_SHIFT_CODE = crew.WORK_SHIFT_CODE
JOIN
(SELECT MIN(ARRIVE) AS minARRIVE, USER_ID
FROM ORDER_STATUS
GROUP BY USER_ID
) os ON oc.USER_ID = crew.CREW_ID
GROUP B
l.OFFICE_NAME, crew.EMPLOYEE_NAME
This probably won't give correct data because of the minARRIVE grouping: there isn't enough info from ORDER_STATUS to show "which day" or "which shift". It's simply "first arrival for that user for all time"
Edit:
This will give you average minutes
You can add this back to minARRIVE using DATEADD, or change to hh:mm with some %60 (modul0) and /60 (integer divide
AVG(
DATEDIFF(minute, os.minARRIVE, os.minARRIVE)
)