Finding the last 4, 3, 2, 1 months consecutive order drops among clients based on drop variance - sql

Question

Here I have this query that finds out the drop percentage of a bunch of clients based on the orders they have received(i.e. It finds the percentage difference in orders by comparing the current month with the previous month). What I want to achieve here is to have a field where I can see the clients who had 4 months continuous drop, 3 months drop, 2 months drop, and 1 month drop.
I know, it can only be achieved by comparing the last 4 months using the lag function or sub queries. can you guys pls help me out on this one, would appreciate it very much
select
fd.customers2, fd.Month1, fd.year1, fd.variance, case when
(fd.variance < -0.00001 and fd.year1 = '2022.0' and fd.Month1 = '1')
then '1month drop' else fd.customers2 end as 1_most_host_drop
from 
(SELECT
c.*,
sa.customers as customers2,
sum(sa.order) as orders,
date_part(mon, sa.date) as Month1,
date_part(year, sa.date) as year1,
(cast(orders - LAG(orders) OVER(Partition by customers2 ORDER BY
 year1, Month1) as NUMERIC(10,2))/NULLIF(LAG(orders) 
OVER(partition by customers2 ORDER BY year1, Month1) * 1, 0)) AS variance
FROM stats sa join (select distinct
    d.id, d.customers 
     from configer d 
    ) c on sa.customers=c.customers
WHERE sa.date >= '2021-04-1' 
GROUP BY Month1, sa.customers, c.id,  year1, 
     c.customers)fd

Answer 1

In a spirit of friendliness: I think you are a little premature in posting this here as there are several issues with the syntax before even reaching the point where you can solve the problem:
You have at least two places with a comma immediately preceding the word FROM:
...AS variance, FROM stats_archive sa ...
...d.customers, FROM config d...
Recommend you don't use VARIANCE as an alias (it is a system function in PostgreSQL and so is likely also a system function name in Redshift)
Not super important, but there's no need for c.* - just select the columns you will use
DATE_PART requires a string as the first parameter DATE_PART('mon',current_date)
I might be wrong about this, but I suspect you cannot use column aliases in the partition by or order by of a window function. Put the originating expressions there instead:
... OVER (PARTITION BY customers2 ORDER BY DATE_PART('year',sa.date),DATE_PART('mon',sa.date))
LAG has three parameters. (1) The column you want to retrieve the value from, (2) the row offset, where a positive integer indicates how many rows prior to the current row you should retrieve a value from according to the partition and order context and (3) the value the function should return as a default (in case of the first row in the partition). As such, you don't need NULLIF. So, to get the row immediately prior to the current row, or return 0 in case the current row is the first row in the partition:
LAG(orders,1,0) OVER (PARTITION BY customers2 ORDER BY DATE_PART('year',sa.date),DATE_PART('mon',sa.date))
If you use 0 as a default in the calculation of what is currently aliased variance, you will almost certainly run into a div/0 error either now, or worse, when you least expect it in the future. You should protect against that with some CASE logic or better, provide a more appropriate default value or even better, calculate the LAG with the default 0, then filter out the 0 rows before doing the calculation.
You can't use column aliases in the GROUP BY. You must reference each field that is not participating in an aggregate in the group by, whether through direct mention (sa.date) or indirectly in an expression (DATE_PART('mon',sa.date))
Your date should be '2021-04-01'
All in all, without sample data, expected results using the posted sample data and without first removing syntax errors, it is a tall order to attempt to offer advice on the problem which is any more specific than:
Build the source of the calculation as a completely separate query first. Calculate the LAG in that source query. Only when you've run that source query and verified that the LAG is producing the correct result should you then wrap it as a sub-query or CTE (not sure if Redshift supports these, but presumably) at which point you can filter out the rows with a zero as the denominator (the first month of orders for each customer).
Good luck!