NATIONAL OPEN UNIVERSITY OF NIGERIA SCHOOL OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY COURSE CODE: CIT381 COURSE TITLE: File Processing and Management CIT381 COURSE GUIDE COURSE GUIDE CIT381 FILE PROCESSING AND MANAGEMENT Course Team Ismaila O. Mudasiru (Developer/Writer) - OAU NATIONAL OPEN UNIVERSITY OF NIGERIA ii CIT381 COURSE GUIDE National Open University of Nigeria Headquarters 14/16 Ahmadu Bello Way Victoria Island Lagos Abuja Office No. 5 Dar es Salaam Street Off Aminu Kano Crescent Wuse II, Abuja Nigeria e-mail:
[email protected] URL: www.nou.edu.ng Published By: National Open University of Nigeria First Printed 2011 ISBN: 978-058-525-7 All Rights Reserved CONTENTS PAGE iii CIT381 COURSE GUIDE Introduction …………………..…………………………………… 1 What You Will Learn in this Course………………………………. 1 Course Aims ………………………………………………………. 2 Course Objectives …………………………………………………. 2 Working through this Course………………………….…………… 3 The Course Materials………………………………………………. 3 Study Units…………………………………………………………. 3 Presentation Schedule……………….……………………………… 4 Assessment…………………………………………………………. 5 Tutor-Marked Assignment…………………………………………. 5 Final Examination and Grading……………………………………. 6 Course Marking Scheme…………………………………………… 6 Facilitators/Tutors and Tutorials…………………………………… 6 Summary…………………………………………………………… 7 iv CIT381 FILE PROCESSING AND MANAGEMENT Introduction File Processing and Management is a second semester course. It is a 2- credit course that is available to students offering Bachelor of Science, B. Sc., Computer Science, Information Systems and Allied degrees. Computers can store information on several different types of physical media. Magnetic tape, magnetic disk and optical disk are the most common media. Each of these media has its own characteristics and physical organisation. For convenience use of the computer system, the operating system provides a uniform logical view of information storage. The operating system abstracts from the physical properties of its storage devices to define a logical storage unit, the file.