Find Total Minutes Ignoring Overlap (Convert Cursor based Answer to CTE)

Question

There is an existing question that asked how to find how many minutes there are in multiple date ranges, ignoring overlaps.

The example data given is (userID isn\'t

Answer 1

I solved that (well, in a way) very efficiently by creating a dumb table having the date and time (accurate be the minute) in one column (PK) and a bit in the second. A '1' meant, the user is available and 0 meant, he/she's not.

The rest is dead simple. I was sick of having to write endless complicated queries in trying to get the minutes in partly overlapping time ranges.

In fact, this was for computing machine efficiency.

I know this is not the real deal but the most simple solution I came up with. You might create a function/SP which creates that table..