Data Processing
Following
is
a brief description
of
data processing and
of
the part you and
your
display system equipment play in the data processing
of
your
organization.
First, you must understand
that
the
"data"
in
"data
processing" refers
to
all the
information or records required
by
your organization
to
conduct its business.
This is a lot
of
information
to
think about, so, for our discussion, let us con·
sider only the
data
required for payroll administration, a common part
of
all
business. The data (information) required
to
perform this function includes the
mimes
of
all employees,
the
number
of
hours each employee worked, his or
her rate
of
pay, the number
of
overtime hours he
or
she worked
(if
any), the
amount
of
money
to
be withheld, and
all
other facts needed
to
pay everyone
the correct amount.
The "processing"
in
"data
processing" refers
to
all the work involved in accom·
plishing a particular data processing job. In a data processing "payroll"
job,
the processing involves providing the host system with the required data,
determining (with the data) each employee's paycheck amount, printing all
the checks, and updating the records.
Putting the two together, then, data processing is the performance
of
jobs
or
tasks
by
processing the required data.
Although data processing has always been
a major part
of
running an organiza·
tion, it has
not
always been called data processing. Before the development
of
the data processing system, almost all processing
of
data was done by hand.
Today, most
of
it is done by data processing systems and in much less time
than before.
The Data Processing System
You will be operating a machine that
is
part
of
your
organization's data process·
ing system. To
give
you some knowledge
of
the other machines in that system,
we
will now examine the different groups
of
machines
that
make up a typical
data processing system. The points discussed will
hol4 true even though some
of
the machines
that
are mentioned may
not
be included in all data processing
systems.
Regardless
of
the information
to
be processed or the equipment used, all data
processing systems can be divided into the three basic sections shown in
Figure 1-1: input, processing, and output.
1-4
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