Patent US 7,103,601

The invention relates to a search engine (2) implemented by a decision application server (1) acting on a relational database (6) that contains a set of target records. The engine (2) is activated by queries for selecting records based on given criteria and comprises means (8) for preconditioning the database (6) supplying a preconditioned encoded table (10), periodically updated at the same time as the relational database (6) itself, to a machine with vectorial capabilities (9) in order for it to be processed. It also comprises means (7) for extracting target records, activated by the queries based on the result of the processing of the table (10) installed in the machine with vectorial capabilities (9), from the relational database (6).It particularly applies to data warehousing systems.