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ethics Guide

QueryinG ineQuality?

MaryAnn Baker works as a data analyst in human faster to ask IS to move all employee data from the operation-
relations at a large, multinational corporation. As part of its al Oracle database into another Oracle database created just
compensation program, her company defines job categories for HR data analysis. Although Oracle provides a graphical
and assigns salary ranges to each category. For example, the query interface like that in Access, she found it easier to com-
category M1 is used for first-line managers and is assigned pose complex queries directly in SQL, so she learned it and,
the salary range of $75,000 to $95,000. Every job descrip- within a few months, became a SQL expert.
tion is assigned to one of these categories, depending on the “I never thought I’d be doing this,” she said. “But it turns
knowledge and skills required to do that job. Thus, the job out to be quite fun, like solving a puzzle, and apparently I’m
titles Manager of Customer Support, Manager of Technical good at it.”
Writing, and Manager of Product Quality Assurance are all One day, after a break, MaryAnn signed into her com-
judged to involve about the same level of management exper- puter and happened to glance at the results of a query
tise and are all assigned to category M1. that she’d left running while she was gone. “That’s odd,”
One of MaryAnn’s tasks is to analyze company sal- she thought, “all the people with Hispanic surnames have
ary data and determine how well actual salaries conform to lower salaries than the others.” She wasn’t looking for that
established ranges. When dis-
crepancies are noted, human
relations managers meet to de- South Dakota
termine whether the discrepancy United States
indicates a need to: Wyoming
• Adjust the category’s salary Nevada Nebraska
range;
• Move the job title to a different Utah
category; California Colorado
• Define a new category; or Anaheim Ontario Kansas
• Train the manager of the em-
ployee with the discrepancy on Long Beach San Bernadino Arizona Gallup
the use of salary ranges in set- Albuquerque Oklahoma
ting employee compensation. San Diego Phoenix New Mexico
El Centro Yuma Casas Adobes
MaryAnn is an expert in Tucson Deming
creating database queries. Ini- Las Cruces Carlsbad
tially, she used Microsoft Access Douglas El Paso Texas
to produce reports, but much of
the salary data she needs resides Houston
in the organization’s Oracle da- San Antonio
tabase. At first she would ask the
IS Department to extract certain Mexico
data and move it into Access, but
over time she learned that it was

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