Data
Data represents information that is to be processed to produce a final result or more data. Computers store, retrieve and compute data. This process involves 4 entities: the programmer, the programming language, the operating system and the hardware.
From a programmer's perspective, data is represented by the variables. These are declared and utilized depending on the rules of the programming language that is employed. The programming language analyzes the use of these variables and outputs code that uses an interface provided by the operating system. This interface offers the possibility to allocate/deallocate different variables in certain memory regions. Next, the operating system manages the execution of the program and provides the actual physical addresses that are used to interact with the data.
Moreover, the operating system governs the competing access of multiple programs to memory, ensuring that a program does not have access to a different program's memory.