INFORMATION RETRIEVAL DEVICE, INFORMATION RETRIEVAL METHOD, INFORMATION RETRIEVAL PROGRAM, AND RECORDING MEDIUM RECORDED WITH SAME PROGRAM

摘要

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide an information retrieval technique for making it possible to provide a user with the user's requested retrieval result at high speed when using a distributed database system. SOLUTION: When the original of a retrieval result is considered not to be updated yet in an element database side which constitutes a distributed database system as time has not passed so much after obtaining the result by retrieval in the past, and when retrieval conditions specified by the retrieval request are preserved by temporarily preserving the retrieval result matched with the retrieval conditions of high retrieval frequency, the retrieval result preserved by matching with the retrieval condition is outputted without retrieving from the element database. Consequently, user's requested retrieval result can be provided to the user at high speed, when the user carries out information retrieval by the distributed database system. COPYRIGHT: (C)2004,JPO&NCIPI