Answer:
The act of conducting or carrying out a deal or business agreement, an exchange or trade, as of ideas, money etc. A transaction is the smallest unit of business activity, may be uses of records are themselves transactions. Transactions are mainly observed at the bottom level of the management. Plenty of operational activities at the bottom level result in one or more transactions. Every transaction may be considered to generate information. The information generated can be highly structured. Structured information is easy to process further. Examples – payroll system, transport ticket reservation system, purchase order entry system, marks tabulation system etc.

Output of such systems may be of printed type or display type on the monitor of the computer. TPS may further be classified as online systems or batch systems. In online systems there is direct interaction of the operator and the TPS system. In batch systems activities of the same type are batched into groups and then processed.

TPS offers the following characteristics. These characteristics are responsible for the TPS to perform methodical, standardized and reliable transactions.
·         Reliability: TPS incorporate safeguard and disaster recovery methods to ensure transaction security and also remain operational permanently.
·         Rapid processing: TPS process transactions very fast due to the virtual transaction processing.
·         Standardization: To maximize efficiency of the transactions, TPS interfaces consider identical data for every transaction, irrespective of the customer.
·         Controlled access: TPS is capable enough to restrict the access to those who lack the skills of controlling the transactions.
·         Transaction processing qualifiers: System must possess ACID test if it has to be considered as TPS.
– Atomicity
– Consistency
– Isolation
– Durability

Examples of online systems: enquiry, checking availability of tickets etc. Examples of batch systems: entering parcel details belonging to one destination, processing students’ marks in one subject etc.