Patent ID: 6990487

Claim:
A searching apparatus for searching a set of records for a combination of records, each of the records being composed of a plurality of attributes, the searching apparatus comprising: a designating device designating a search pattern using a plurality of events and a relation of a sequence of the plurality of events and designating a pattern matching method for matching the search pattern and the combination of records, including as possible pattern matching methods, an all match for returning all combinations of events that match the search pattern, a backward longest match for returning a combination of events whose interval is the longest in combinations of events that backwardly match the search pattern, and a backward shortest match for returning a combination of events whose interval is the shortest in combinations of events that backwardly matches the search pattern, each of the events defining a particular attribute of a record as a particular value, the relation of the sequence of the events being defined according to a sequential order of attribute values; a searching device searching the set of records for a combination of records corresponding to the designated search pattern; and an outputting device outputting a searched result.