Re: HR Package Proposal

[Derek A. Neighbors]

> > A couple of quick notes:
> >
> > You have an assorted number of dates in the employee definition
> > file, trying to cover several bases. But you probably miss a lot
> > of them that some people will need.  What might be nicer is to
> > have a date history file containing fields like
> >
> > code - What the date represents
> > date - the date the event occurred
> > description - any additional descriptive text needed.
>
> Sounds a good idea, if it helps standardise date fields; and I'm sure you're
> right about there being plenty more dates to come. Providing histories would
> also be a big advantage.
> My only concern would be if it made user queries more difficult to write:
> could we avoid making people think 'give me everyone with date code nn date
> before 1970', when what they mean is 'give me everyone with date_of_birth
> before 1970'?
I dont know if I agree with this.  The idea behind GNUe is that its 
EASILY extensible, this type of schema reminds me of unflexible code 
that puts things in slush tables so its 'easy' to add new data 
collection items.

The problem is that generally the input for them looks like crap and are 
in odd places and reporting against them are pure hell.  I have done 
this in the past on  many applications and one reason I started work in 
GNUe as it offerred a chance to rethink these kind of things.

> > Also you have an emergency contact table, but you should make it
> > somewhat more general, as just a contact table.  Use something like
> >
> > code - Type of contact
> > description - any description needed
> > contact - phone number, email, etc.
> >
> > Don't limit it to phone numbers either. You'll want to be able to track
> > email addresses, and web site address, too. There may also be other
> > references in the future (teleport address?) that need to be recorded.
I think we have person classes in the base and I would suspect we woudl 
use those for emergency contacts, so they become 'full contact' records 
in their own right if need be.

-Derek