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In computer science, spooling is an acronym for simultaneous peripheral operations on-line (although this is thought by some to be a backronym). It refers to putting jobs in a buffer, a special area in memory, or on a disk where a device can access them when it is ready. Spooling is useful because devices access data at different rates. The buffer provides a waiting station where data can rest while the slower device catches up.
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 on a queue instead of waiting for each one to finish before specifying the next one.
See also
Spoolers:
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