{"id":1438,"date":"2010-08-02T01:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-08-02T09:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/?p=1438"},"modified":"2010-06-14T18:25:18","modified_gmt":"2010-06-15T02:25:18","slug":"implementing-smart-codes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/?p=1438","title":{"rendered":"Implementing Smart Codes"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>So you\u2019re going to implement new job codes, or department codes, or whatever.\u00a0 Someone in the organization has a great idea:\u00a0 \u201clet\u2019s make the codes smart!\u201d\u00a0 I mean, what better idea to manage the information within the code than to implant attributes within the code itself.\u00a0 So you go down the road:\u00a0 Job category will be digit 1, job family will be digit 2, EEO code will be digit 3, grade will be digit 4.\u00a0 If you\u2019re on PeopleSoft, I think you only have 6 digits to work with, so 4 is probably a sensible place to stop.<\/p>\n

Wait\u2026 Perhaps digit 1 was actually the sensible place to stop.<\/p>\n

You see, a long time ago, when we were running off of mainframe computers, and we didn\u2019t have a robust job table to work with, it was important to capture all the attributes of the job in the code.\u00a0 I mean, if you didn\u2019t capture all that information in the code, how were you ever going to get a report on all people performing a finance function?\u00a0 The only place to store a job attribute would have been the job code.\u00a0 Think Dewey Decimal System.\u00a0 Brilliant at the time, but would we really catalog a library that way if we could reconstruct every library in the world simultaneously?\u00a0 Lucky for us, we don\u2019t have mainframe computers anymore.<\/p>\n

You see, today we have what are called relational databases.\u00a0 They have actually been around for a very long time.\u00a0 Relational databases allow us to store attributes in tables which have many fields on them.\u00a0 This lets us actually use these additional fields to select and report on, rather than trying to force a report to sort on Digit 3.<\/p>\n

Does it even make sense to include attributes in the code from a definition perspective?\u00a0 Do all those attributes end up helping us manage the information?\u00a0 I\u2019m going to argue almost not at all.\u00a0 There is some benefit to being able to visually recognize that a code is an HR job, but I\u2019m not sure there is much use outside of that.\u00a0 We need to utilize the table structure for what it was meant to do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So you\u2019re going to implement new job codes, or department codes, or whatever.\u00a0 Someone in the organization has a great idea:\u00a0 \u201clet\u2019s make the codes smart!\u201d\u00a0 I mean, what better idea to manage the information within the code than to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1483,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[27,34],"tags":[452,191,190],"class_list":["post-1438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-data-metrics","category-implementation","tag-implementation","tag-relational-database","tag-smart-codes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1438"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1438\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1482,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1438\/revisions\/1482"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}