ELECTRONIC DATA PROCESSING
Electronic
data processing (EDP) enables the firms to quickly process large volume of data
accurately through application of computer. It applies variety of logical and
mathematical decision making techniques to carry out the functions of data
processing with predetermined priorities of the data. EDP increased the output
of the work and efficiency by adopting proper mechanisms of storing,
maintaining and retrieval of data when needed, based on the purpose which is meant
for.
The
word ‘data’ is the plural of ‘datum’ though data is commonly used as both in
the singular and plural forms. Data refers to any fact, observation, assumption
or occurrence. Data are facts which form the basic material to be processed to
produce information. Data are compiled to form reports, figures or documents
etc. Data can be a form of numerical or alphabetical characters or special
symbols (viz=,+,% etc) . Some important data definitions are given below.
Digit: A simple numeric
character 0, 1, 2 ...9.
Character: A simple alphabetic,
numeric or special character that is used to represent
data. For example,0,1,2 ...9, A, B, C......Z, +,-,%, etc.
Data item (field): A set of characters which are used together to represent a specific data element,
e.g., a name items contains the alphabetic characters in a name, and an amount
of items that contains the numeric in an amount.
Record: It consists of a group
of data items related to an object of
data processing e.g., a payroll, record of an employee which contains data
fields as name, age, qualification, sex, wage rate etc.
Data
file is a compilation of related data records maintained in some pre-arranged
order. Files are usually created function-wise e.g., a payroll file might
consist of 1,000 individual employees data records and the records might be
arranged in file by employee number.
The
relationship of a character, data item, record and the file is shown in figure
1 below
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