Default value for LAG function in MariaDB - mariadb

Question

I'm trying to build a view which allows me to track the difference between paid values at two consecutive month_ids. When a figure is missing however, that would be because it's the first entry and therefore has a paid amount of 0. At present, I'm using the below to represent the previous figure since the [,default] argument has not been implemented in MariaDB.
CASE WHEN (
NOT(policy_agent_month.policy_agent_month_id IS NOT NULL
AND LAG(days_paid, 1) OVER (PARTITION BY claim_id ORDER BY month_id ) IS NULL)) THEN
LAG(days_paid, 1) OVER ( PARTITION BY claim_id ORDER BY month_id)
ELSE
0
END
The problem I have with this is that I have about 30 variables which this function needs to be applied over and it makes my code unreadable and very clunky. Is there a better solution?

Answer 1

Why use WITH?
SELECT province, tot_pop,
tot_pop - COALESCE(
(LAG(tot_pop) OVER (ORDER BY tot_pop ASC)),
0) AS delta
FROM provinces
ORDER BY tot_pop asc;
+---------------------------+----------+---------+
| province | tot_pop | delta |
+---------------------------+----------+---------+
| Nunavut | 14585 | 14585 |
| Yukon | 21304 | 6719 |
| Northwest Territories | 24571 | 3267 |
| Prince Edward Island | 63071 | 38500 |
| Newfoundland and Labrador | 100761 | 37690 |
| New Brunswick | 332715 | 231954 |
| Nova Scotia | 471284 | 138569 |
| Saskatchewan | 622467 | 151183 |
| Manitoba | 772672 | 150205 |
| Alberta | 2481213 | 1708541 |
| British Columbia | 3287519 | 806306 |
| Quebec | 5321098 | 2033579 |
| Ontario | 10071458 | 4750360 |
+---------------------------+----------+---------+
13 rows in set (0.00 sec)
However, it is not cheap (at least in MySQL 8.0);
the table has 13 rows, yet
FLUSH STATUS;
SELECT ...
SHOW SESSION STATUS LIKE 'Handler%';
MySQL 8.0:
+----------------------------+-------+
| Variable_name | Value |
+----------------------------+-------+
| Handler_read_rnd | 89 |
| Handler_read_rnd_next | 52 |
| Handler_write | 26 |
(and others)
MariaDB 10.3:
| Handler_read_rnd | 77 |
| Handler_read_rnd_next | 42 |
| Handler_tmp_write | 13 |
| Handler_update | 13 |

Answer 2

You can use a CTE (Common Table Expression) in MariaDB 10.2+ to pre-compute frequently used expressions and name them for later use:
with
x as ( -- first we compute the CTE that we name "x"
select
*,
coalesce(
LAG(days_paid, 1) OVER (PARTITION BY claim_id ORDER BY month_id),
123456
) as prev_month -- this expression gets the name "prev_month"
from my_table -- or a simple/complex join here
)
select -- now the main query
prev_month
from x
... -- rest of your query here where "prev_month" is computed.
In the main query prev_month has the lag value, or the default value 123456 when it's null.