Data Processing; The Data Processing System - IBM 3270 Operator's Manual

Understanding the 3270
The following discussion briefly describes data processing and
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 of 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's consider only the data
required for payroll administration, a common part of all
business. The data (information) required to perform this
function includes the names of all employees, the number of
hours each employee worked, her (or his) 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 accomplishing a particular data processing job. In a
data processing "payroll" job, the processing involves: providing
the computer with the required data, determining (with the data)
each employee's paycheck amount, printing all of the checks,
and u pdati ng 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 organization, it hasn't always been called data
processing. Before the development of the computer, almost all
processing of data was done by hand. Today, most of it is done
by computer systems and in much less time than before.
You will be operating a machine that is part of your
organization's data processing system. To give you some know-
ledge 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 hold true even
though some of the machines that are mentioned may not be
included in all data processing systems.
Data Processing
The Data
Processing System
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