By default, for the repository item type designated by the is-document attribute, the IndexingOutputConfig component generates one record per item. In some cases, though, you may want to generate more than one record for each repository item. For example, suppose you have a repository whose text properties are stored in both French and English, and the language displayed is determined by the user’s locale setting. In this case you will typically want to create two records from each repository item, one with the text content in French, and the other one in English.

To handle situations like this, the Oracle ATG Web Commerce platform provides an interface named atg.repository.search.indexing.VariantProducer. You can write your own implementations of the VariantProducer interface, or you can use implementations included with the ATG platform. This interface defines a single method, prepareNextVariant(), for determining the number and type of variants to produce. Depending on how your repository is organized, implementations of this method can use a variety of approaches for determining how to generate variant records.