NationMaster - Encyclopedia: Spooling

In computer science, spooling refers to process of communicating data to another program by placing it in a temporary working area, where the other program can access it at some later point in time. Traditional uses of the term spooling apply it to situations where there is little or no direct communication between the program that writes the data and the program that reads it. Spooling is often used when devices access data at different rates. The temporary working area provides a waiting station where data can reside while a slower device can process it at its own rate. New data is only added and deleted at the ends of the area, i.e., there is no random access or editing. Computer science, or computing science, is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and their implementation and application in computer systems. ... For other uses, see Data (disambiguation). ... In computer science, random access is the ability to access a random element of a group in equal time. ...

It can also refer to a storage device that incorporates a physical spool, such as a tape drive. A storage device is a device used for storing something. ... DDS tape drive. ...

The most common spooling application is print spooling. In print spooling, documents are loaded into a buffer (usually an area on a disk), and then the printer pulls them off the buffer at its own rate. Because the documents are in a buffer where they can be accessed by the printer, the user is free to perform other operations on the computer while the printing takes place in the background. Spooling also lets users place a number of print jobs in a queue instead of waiting for each one to finish before specifying the next one. For the similarly-named Surrealist journal, see Documents (journal). ... A computer printer, or more commonly a printer, produces a hard copy (permanent human-readable text and/or graphics) of documents stored in electronic form, usually on physical print media such as paper transparencies]]. Many printers are primarily used as computer peripherals, and are attached by a printer cable to... This article is about the machine. ... In computing, especially printing terminology, queuing refers to lining up jobs for a computer or device. ...

The temporary storage area to which e-mail is delivered by a Mail Transfer Agent and in which it waits to be picked up by a Mail User Agent is sometimes called a mail spool. Likewise, a storage area for Usenet articles may be referred to as a news spool. (On Unix-like systems, these areas are usually located in the /var/spool directory.) Unlike other spools, mail and news spools usually allow random access to individual messages. Wikipedia does not yet have an article with this exact name. ... A mail transfer agent or MTA (also called a mail transport agent, mail server, or a mail exchanger in the context of the Domain Name System) is a computer program or software agent that transfers electronic mail messages from one computer to another. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... Usenet (USEr NETwork) is a global, decentralized, distributed Internet discussion system that evolved from a general purpose UUCP architecture of the same name. ... Diagram of the relationships between several Unix-like systems A Unix-like operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, while not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification. ... The Filesystem Hierarchy Standard (FHS) defines the main directories and their contents in Linux and other Unix-like computer operating systems. ... In computer science, random access is the ability to access a random element of a group in equal time. ...

Origin of the term

"Spool" is supposedly an acronym for simultaneous peripheral operations on-line (although this is thought by some to be a backronym), or as for printers: simultaneous peripheral output on line (yes, not on-line but on line). Early mainframe computers had, by current standards, small and expensive hard disks. These costs made it necessary to reserve the disks for files that required random access, while writing large sequential files to reels of tape. Typical programs would run for hours and produce hundreds or thousands of pages of printed output. Periodically the program would stop printing for a while to do a lengthy search or sort. But it was desirable to keep the printer(s) running continuously. Thus when a program was running, it would write the printable file to a spool of tape, which would later be read back in by the program controlling the printer. Image File history File linksMetadata Download high resolution version (1590x1524, 349 KB) Title : A 1/2 computer tape. ... Image File history File linksMetadata Download high resolution version (1590x1524, 349 KB) Title : A 1/2 computer tape. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Backronym and Apronym (Discuss) Acronyms and initialisms are abbreviations, such as NATO, laser, and ABC, written as the initial letter or letters of words, and pronounced on the basis of this abbreviated written form. ... A backronym (or bacronym) is a phrase that is constructed after the fact from a previously existing abbreviation, the abbreviation being an initialism or an acronym. ... For other uses, see Mainframe. ... Typical hard drives of the mid-1990s. ... Magnetic tape has been used for data storage for over 50 years. ... Program or Programme may refer to: Computer program Radio programming Television program(me), Webcast Program (management) 12-step program Program (The Animatrix), a short film in The Animatrix series Event programme British tabloid form of comic book, called prog in short. ...

Spooling also improved the multiprogramming capability of systems. Most programs required input, and produced output, using slow peripherals such as card-readers and lineprinters. Without spooling, the number of tasks that could be multiprogrammed could be limited by the availability of peripherals; with spooling, a task did not need access to a real device: slow peripheral input and output for several tasks could be held on shared system storage, written and read by separate system processes running asynchronously with those tasks

See also