The invention discloses a data retrieving method and a server and aims to solve the technical problem of on-heap memory overflow of a JVM server during retrieving data. The method comprises the following steps: obtaining keywords for retrieving; and retrieving data objects in pages in a memory device according to the keywords, wherein the operations performed for each page of data objects are as follows: successively storing unique identifiers of the data objects with the keywords in an on-heap memory; storing the unique identifiers stored in the on-heap memory in an off-heap memory when the number of the unique identifiers stored in the on-heap memory reaches a threshold value, and deleting the unique identifiers stored in the on-heap memory. The method and the server are used for retrieving data.