What is Data Communication and Data Processing?

Data communication can be defined as the transfer of the information from one individual to another. With the help of the data communication, one is able to reach others with the help of the transmission of the ideas, facts, thoughts, feelings, attitudes and the values. But it is very much important to understand one point here, which says that there is a lot of difference between the data communication and the communication. The main difference between these two is that the data communication is very much specific in the accordance to the computer – based management information system. Data communication consists of the following –

1. Data processing – In the information system, data acts as the back – bone and helps in keeping the various components of the information system glued to each other. Data is actually in unstructured form consisting of the data in the complete isolation in order to be used as the raw material of or for the information system.
Data can be easily expressed in the form of the numerals and can also be expressed in alphabetic, alpha – numeric, images, special characters, symbols etc.

2. Data organization – The movement, storage and the very much important computation of the data takes place in the unit of the bytes. One character is represented by one byte. The byte further consists of the eight bits and the data is very much structured in the nature – which helps in the processing in a specific sequence and is then ultimately stored in the file.

Some important points to be remembered in the case of the data organization can be summarized as the follows –

a. The bits form a byte.
b. The byte represents a character.
c. A number of the characters form a field.
d. Fields constitute a record.
e. Records constitute a block.
f. Blocks constitute a file.
g. Files constitute a database.

Data Processing
The processing of the data consists of a large number of the activities or the operations and these operations are very much similar to those in a manufacturing unit. The basic process involved in data processing is of the conversion of the basic raw material – data – into a finished product – information.

Data processing helps in carrying out a number of the data operations – and these can be illustrated as the follows –

Data Processing and Transactions
Transaction processing is actually performed by the data processing and one very important point to be kept in mind here is that there will be no generation of any type of the data or the document, if there will not be any type of the transaction. So it can be said that as a result of all this, in such a scenario there will be no requirement of the data processing. One major point to be remembered here is that the transaction is a fundamental organizational function.

Transaction Processing
For carrying out the various organizational operations, the transaction processing plays a very major role – it actually acts as the back – bone of working of the organizational operations. If there will be no transaction processing, then the payment of the bills, issuing of the purchase orders, placement of the sales orders and the reservations will not be made. So before a transaction processing, the relative data has to be certainly checked and then verified for the correct and the acceptable data. This operation is referred to as the data validation. During this process, a set of the computer software programs is used and these are generally referred to as the validation programs. Here some of the particular data validation tests are performed to the various data items.

The validations tests are used for checking the following type of the attributes –