With the introduction of advanced monitoring technology into engineering systems, healthcare, etc., the associated diagnostic processes are increasingly required to handle and consider vast amounts of data. An exemplar of such a diagnosis process was developed during the DAME project, which built a proof of concept demonstrator to assist in the enhanced diagnosis and prognosis of aero-engine conditions. In particular it has shown the utility of an interactive viewing and high performance distributed search tool (the Signal Data Explorer) in the aeroengine diagnostic process. The viewing and search techniques are equally applicable to other domains. The Signal Data Explorer and search services have been demonstrated on the Worldwide Universities Network to search distributed databases of electrocardiograph data.