PURPOSE: To effectively use hardware resources such as a common bus or channels, etc.

CONSTITUTION: A channel command designating the address of a retrieval object record is transmitted from a channel 1 to a file controller 2 connecting modules such as a channel adapter 4 and a device adapter 6 or the like capable of independent operations to a common bus 5 to retrieve at a filing device 3 and the result is reported from the file controller 2 to the channel 1. In this retrieving system, the device adapter 6 of an order lower than the common bus 5 is equipped with a comparison part 7 to compare the address in the channel command with the address of the record under retrieval, when both the addresses are not equal, the device adapter 6 instructs the continuation of the retrieval and when they are equal, it is reported through the common bus 5 to the channel 1 that the retrieval object record is discovered.