automatic data processing

automatic data processing

[¦ȯd·ə¦mad·ik ¦dad·ə ′präs‚əs·iŋ]

(engineering)

The machine performance, with little or no human assistance, of any of a variety of tasks involving informational data; examples include automatic and responsive reading, computation, writing, speaking, directing artillery, and the running of an entire factory. Abbreviated ADP.

McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific & Technical Terms, 6E, Copyright © 2003 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

data processing

(1) The first name given to the information technology (IT) industry. From the early 1900s to the 1960s, it meant feeding punch cards into tabulating machines. Thereafter, data processing referred to computer processing, and eventually IT became the industry term. See punch card.

(2) Processing data/information, which includes text, images, audio and video. The term may refer to business processing (update this order, sum this amount, etc.) or to multimedia processing (encode these video frames, decode and play this audio file, etc.). See data, information, preprocessing and information processing cycle.

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