A method for identifying a crystallographic candidate phase of a crystal in an EBSD diffraction pattern, comprising the steps of: (i) Sorting and indexing of the bands of an EBSD diffraction pattern in order of decreasing intensity; (ii) Providing of indices of diffraction bands of crystallographic candidate phases, which are to be expected as a result of the EBSD pattern acquisition, in a database, wherein all the indices provided are, in each case, assigned to a crystallographic candidate phase; (iii) Identification of the expected bands with the bands measured in the EBSD diffraction pattern for each crystallographic candidate phase; (iv) Comparison of the intensities of bands of the EBSD diffraction pattern with intensities which were predicted for the diffraction bands of the crystallographic candidate phases, which are to be expected as a result of the EBSD pattern acquisition, the indices of said crystallographic candidate phases being stored in the database, wherein intensity ranks are, in each case, assigned to the provided indices of the expected diffraction bands as a result of the EBSD pattern acquisition according to the intensity predicted for the respective diffraction band, wherein the highest intensity rank is assigned to the index of the diffraction band for which the greatest intensity is predicted, the indices of the bands of the EBSD diffraction pattern are compared with the indices of the expected diffraction bands of the crystallographic candidate phases as a result of the EBSD pattern acquisition, which are stored in the EBSD database, in terms of their intensity, in that those indices stored in the database, each of which is assigned to a crystallographic candidate phase, are arranged for each crystallographic candidate phase according to the order of the indicated bands, and the intensity ranks assigned to the indices stored in the database are used for comparison, the comparison with the indices stored in the database is carried out in that the indices stored in the database, arranged in the order of the indicated bands, each of which is assigned to a crystallographic candidate phase, are permutated with one another in pairs such that the intensity ranks assigned to the indices of the crystallographic candidate phase are sorted in descending order, wherein the highest intensity rank constitutes the first value in the intensity ranking, and the number of permutations of consecutive indices required to produce this intensity ranking is recorded, and the indices of the crystallographic candidate phase to be identified are compared with the indices of the expected diffraction bands of at least two crystallographic candidate phases as a result of the EBSD pattern acquisition, which are provided in the database, which crystallographic candidate phases indicate the same bands, and the crystallographic candidate phase is identified with the lowest number of required permutations with the crystallographic candidate phase to be identified. (i) Sorting and indexing of the bands of an EBSD diffraction pattern in order of decreasing intensity; (ii) Providing of indices of diffraction bands of crystallographic candidate phases, which are to be expected as a result of the EBSD pattern acquisition, in a database, wherein all the indices provided are, in each case, assigned to a crystallographic candidate phase; (iii) Identification of the expected bands with the bands measured in the EBSD diffraction pattern for each crystallographic candidate phase; (iv) Comparison of the intensities of bands of the EBSD diffraction pattern with intensities which were predicted for the diffraction bands of the crystallographic candidate phases, which are to be expected as a result of the EBSD pattern acquisition, the indices of said crystallographic candidate phases being stored in the database, wherein