Components of a TPS
Users
These are the people within the company that run and use the TPS. These individuals will access the data from the online system to check inventory, orders, find and receive data to use in other planning systems and so on.
Partipicants
The people who perform the transaction processing, either as real-time or batch. The types of actions they perform will therefore vary depending on the type of TPS.
People
People from the environment are becoming participants in real-time processing systems as they directly enter transactions and perform validation.
This is how I remember it:
User: Someone who uses the system, this is a broad and generic term.
Partipicant: The people who perform information processes, using the system.
People: This category includes external users of the system who are becoming participants.
My example:
Users are the ones who use EFTPOS systems, they can include
participants as well as
people. The difference lies in the fact that
participants will collect, organise, analyse, store/retrieve, process, transmit/receive and display (the information processes) for the
people who use the system.
That is,
'Users' could be anyone,
'Participants' would be banking staff at the Commonwealth Bank,
and
'People' would be those who use EFTPOS systems, but if you're talking about "self-serve" systems, then the
people can be considered as
participants.
Thankfully, you won't have to talk about
direct, indirect and intermediary users as you had to in Years 9/10 Computing Studies