Count number of hours between dates excluding holidays/weekends

Question

Hello all
I havent worked with dates extensively and was recently asked to create a report where Im looking for the number of hours between two dates only counting business days.
So for example I have data as follows
Created 2011-03-30 15:00:00
Processed 2011-03-30 15:03:46
Fulfilled 2011-04-01 17:25:02
Mailed     2011-04-01 17:45:00
For a total of looking from the CREATED and MAILED dates
50 hours 45 minutes
Im also trying to exclude weekends and holidays, i was reading around and was actually able to also find a table of dates where I have the main date, HOLIDAY_IND column and WEEKDAY_IND column
So the calender table i have looks similar to
CALENDER_DATE HOLIDAY_IND WEEKDAY_IND
2011-03-31 Y Y
2011-04-01 N Y
2011-04-02 N N
Im really quite stumped as to where to begin
I was thinking of trying to write it with PL/SQL but i dont have the proper user access to create procedures/functions, so looks like straight up SQL
Any help appreciated!

Answer 1

Hi,
Depeneding on your data and your requirements, you can do something like this:
SELECT     created_DATE,
,     mailed_date
,     24 * ( (mailed_date - created_date)
            SELECT  COUNT (*)
            FROM        table_o_dates
            WHERE    main_date > created_date
            AND        main_date < TRUNC (mailed_date)
            AND        (   holiday_ind = 'Y'
                     OR  weekday_ind = 'N'
           )               AS hours_between       
FROM     table_x
I hope this answers your question.
If not, post a little sample data (CREATE TABLE and INSERT statements, relevant columns only) for all tables, and also post the results you want from that data.
Explain, using specific examples, how you get those results from that data.
Always say which version of Oracle you're using.
What do you want to do if created_date or mailed_date is not a work day? Include examples in you data and results.