A number of items of data from a data source (12) are to be processed, and then supplied to a data destination (16-17). Each item of data may be image data, text data, numeric data or some other type of data, or a combination of these types of data. The processing of each data item is controlled by a project definition (14, 71, 101), which includes a plurality of modules selected from a variety of available modules (Tables 1-4). The modules have input and output ports which are interrelated by binding information. Each project definition can be developed on one machine (211, 226), and then transmitted through a network (208, 206) to a different location on the network, where the project definition will be stored and/or executed by at least one different machine (212, 221-223).