An apparatus includes a controller, a converter, and table information storing physical identification information identifying a physical port of first and second physical switches in association with virtual identification information identifying a virtual port of a virtual switch. The recognition initial conditions are then used on the original version of the image to recognize objects such as characters in the image. A light intensity control unit varies a light intensity of the pumping light using the pumping light to improve the gain flatness of a Raman gain. The technique therefore allows one to investigate unexplored regions of the chemical space, avoiding redundancy, generating compounds with similar chemical information content, or to focus on subsets of the chemical space that are relevant to drug-like structures, without additional errors due to extrapolation. Furthermore, the primary data and the secondary data are outputted to the output unit while correlating them to each other.