What is Traditional File Processing System And Its Characteristics

What is Traditional File Processing System And Its Characteristics: Before the use of computer, a manual file system was used to maintain the records and files. All the data was stored in files and it makes it easy to find any information. But this system was good only for small organizations having small number of items.

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It has many disadvantages given below:

• It was time consuming.
• Inefficient to maintain the record of big firm having large number of items.
• It requires a lots of labor work to do.
• It becomes more complex when anyone requires changing the information.

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To overcome these disadvantages and to make the processing fast, File Processing System was introduced. This system was able to solve all the above problems. Let us find what Traditional File Processing System was.

What is Traditional File Processing System And Its Characteristics

Traditional File Processing Systems

It was totally computer based system where all the information is store in different computer files. Also traditional files system stores data in a manner that all the departments of an organization have their own set of files that creates data redundancy.

Also See:Complete Guide: Denormalization in Database (DBMS)

For example:

To illustrate Traditional File Processing Systems definition, lets us take an example of college where student record for examination is stored n other file and his library record is stored in different file that creates many duplicate values like roll Number, Name and Father Name.

A typical Traditional File Processing Systems is shown in the diagram that shows program and data independency.

The main highlighted in this figure is data and program independency. It means that data and program depends upon each other. And due to this, any change in one file will affect all the others files too.

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There are many characteristics of Traditional File Processing Systems that are given below.

Characteristics OF Traditional File Processing System

• It stores data of an organization in group of files.
• Files carrying data are independent on each other.
• COBOL, C, C++ programming languages were used to design the files.
• Each file contains data for some specific area or department like library, student fees, and student examinations.
• It is less flexible and has many limitations.
• It is very difficult to maintain file processing system.
• Any change in one file affects all the files that creates burden on the programmer.
• File in Traditional File Processing Systems are called flat files.

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Overall, Traditional File Processing Systems was good in many cases in compare to manual non computer based system but still it had many disadvantages that were overcome by Data Base Management System.

Also See: File Organization in DBMS

We hope you get the basic idea behind Traditional File Processing Systems and its characteristics. If you have any doubt about this topic then please comment below, we will surely solve it. If you liked it then please share it with your friends.