Data Processing System
Data processing is any process that a computer program does to enter data and summarise, analyses or otherwise convert data into usable information. The process may be automated and run on a computer. It involves recording, analysing, sorting, summarising, calculating, disseminating and storing data. Because data are most useful when well-presented and actually informative, data-processing systems are often referred to as information systems. Nevertheless, the terms are roughly synonymous, performing similar conversions; data-processing systems typically manipulate raw data into information, and likewise information systems typically take raw data as input to produce information as output.
Data processing may or may not be distinguished from data conversion, when the process is merely to convert data to another format, and does not involve any data manipulation.
A software code compiler (e.g., for Fortran or ALGOL) is an example of a software data processing system. The software data processing system makes use of a (general purpose) computer in order to complete its functions. A software data processing system is normally a standalone unit of software, in that its output can be directed to any number of other (not necessarily as yet identified) information processing subsystems.
Read more about Data Processing System: Scientific Data Processing, Commercial Data Processing, Data Analysis
Famous quotes containing the words data and/or system:
“To write it, it took three months; to conceive it three minutes; to collect the data in it—all my life.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)
“Columbus stood in his age as the pioneer of progress and enlightenment. The system of universal education is in our age the most prominent and salutary feature of the spirit of enlightenment, and it is peculiarly appropriate that the schools be made by the people the center of the day’s demonstration. Let the national flag float over every schoolhouse in the country and the exercises be such as shall impress upon our youth the patriotic duties of American citizenship.”
—Benjamin Harrison (1833–1901)