Patent ID: 7693908

Claim:
A method in a computing device for analyzing time dependency of a query, the method comprising: storing frequency of the query at each of a plurality of intervals, the frequency for an interval indicating number of times the query was submitted during that interval; calculating by the computing device values of a frequency spectral for each of a plurality of angular frequencies of the query based on the stored frequency of the queries at each of the plurality of intervals based on the following equation: S N ⁡ ( λ ) = ∑ t = 1 N ⁢ q t ⁢ ⅇ - ⅈ ⁢ ⁢ λ ⁢ ⁢ t ⁢ λ ∈ [ - π , π ] where S N (λ) represents a value of the spectral frequency for the angular frequency λ, q t represents the frequency for interval t, and N represents the number of intervals in the plurality of intervals; determining by the computing device whether the values of the frequency spectral include peaks wherein a peak is a locally maximum value of the frequency spectral within a range with a property as represented by the following: S N ⁡ ( λ j ) ≥ S N ⁡ ( λ ) , ⁢ where ⁢ ⁢ λ ∈ [ λ j - 1 2 ⁢ N , λ j + 1 2 ⁢ N ] ; and after determining that the values of the frequency spectral include no peaks, indicating that the query is time-independent; and after determining that the values of the frequency spectral include a peak, indicating that the query is time-dependent; and calculating the periodicities of the query based on the following equation: T j =2π/λ j where T j represents the periodicity corresponding to the peak at angular frequency λ j wherein time dependency of the query based on the determination of whether the frequency spectral includes peaks.