We have the requirement to find a result in a collection of records based on a prioritised set of search criteria against a relational db (I'm talking indexed field matching here rather than text search). The way we are thinking about designing the query is to begin with a highly refined and specific set of criteria. If there are no results for this initial query we want to progressively reduce the criteria one by one in order of reducing priority, querying each time such a less specific set of criteria until we find a result we can accept.

Alternatively, we have considered starting with a smaller set of criteria and increasing until we have reduced number of results down to the last set.

What I would like to know is if an existing term to describe this type of query exists? So that we can look to model our own on existing patterns and use best practice.