CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javac#c++
Ian McGrath
Ian McGrath

Reputation: 1012

Design data structure for Employee-Manager

The question is to design a structure for the employee/manager system.

1) An employee belongs to a manager.

2) A manager has several employees.

3) Manager may also belong to a manager.

4) Employee has only one manager

Design the data structure so that it supports the following operation: delete an employee/manager, promotion(an employee becomes a manager).

Any programming language would suffice.

Note: I do not want code. Just the verbal explanation would be ok.

Upvotes: 3

Views: 4704

Answers (4)

Martin Tausch
Martin Tausch

Reputation: 744

My first idea is to use employee as baseclass with a property manager as pointer to the manager-object (and other necessary properties like 'id') and a class manager, inheriting from employee with a list of pointers to employees.

This could be wrapped in a model containing a list of all employees/manager and methods like 'promote (employee)'. Employee could have also a method like 'promote', which returns a manager-object. The manager-class could have a constructor with employee-parameter...

Update (C# code):

public class Employee
{

    public string ID;
    public Manager Manager;

    public Manager promote() { return new Manager(this); }

    public Employee() { }

}

public class Manager : Employee
{

    public List<Employee> Employees;

    public Manager() { }
    public Manager(Employee employee) {...}

}

public class EmployeeModel
{

    private List<Employee> employees;
    public List<Employee> Employees { get { return this.employees; } }

    public void addEmployee(...) {...}
    public void removeEmployee(...) {...}
    public void promoteEmployee(...) {...}

}

Somehow like this...

Upvotes: 2

ppuskar
ppuskar

Reputation: 771

I would say first find out the entities (which you already have, Employee and Manager). Now find out the relationship based on your constraint :

Manager to Employee (one to many)

Employee to Manager (one to one)

An employee can be a manager.

Options

  1. Have one single Class Employee which 'has' (association) List of Employee
  2. Have reference of Employee (as manager, Employee reportsTo) in Employee itself.

Area of pain in the above two options : Option#1 If you delete the manager then List of Employee would go orphan (Employee without manager) Option#2 if you want to see all employee under a single Manager then you need to iterate through all EMployee for the managers employeeID.

Looking forward for other answers.

Upvotes: 1

Amir Bareket
Amir Bareket

Reputation: 431

from desgin perspective i would use the composite design pattern. [composite digaram]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Composite_UML_class_diagram_(fixed).svg . each employee ( which could be a manager ) holds pointer to his manager and each manager holds list of pointers to his employees. but there is only one class ( Employee ).

Upvotes: 1

Kenan Zahirovic
Kenan Zahirovic

Reputation: 1597

You need just one table:

CREATE TABLE employees (
id integer NOT NULL,
name varchar(50) DEFAULT NULL,
manager_id integer DEFAULT NULL,
PRIMARY KEY (id)
)

This table has a reference to itself (manager_id->id).

If the record has NULL value in "manager_id" field, than it's a top manager. All other records should have some value in "manager_id" field, which is a reference to PrimaryKey field "id"

Upvotes: 1

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