Aggregated records can be accessed through keyword search or Guided Navigation in the same way that other types of records can be accessed.

Aggregated records appear in results lists. The number of member records that appear with each aggregated record in the results list is configurable. Typically, a single member record is included; this record is known as the representative record. See the following section for information about how to configure aggregated records.

You can configure some or all properties of this record to be available to your front end application for display by configuring the resultsListDefaultConfig property in a file named assembler-context.xml (see below).

Your front end application determines how the aggregated record and the member record returned with it are displayed.

For example, suppose that your data includes several records representing different SKU items that belong to a single product such as "Frederick's Castaway Boat Shoe". The records representing the SKU items contain product information about the different versions of this product, distinguished by size, color, and other qualities. In this case, you can configure an aggregated record to represent the product "Frederick's Castaway Boat Shoe" and a member record to represent each version (SKU item) of this product.

If your query returns "Frederick's Castaway Boat Shoe" and you then refine your search further -- for example, by selecting a color -- some member records may be removed from the aggregated record. For example, if you select "brown", all member records that represent Frederick's Castaway Boat Shoes in colors other than brown are removed. Thus, the actual set of member records varies at runtime, depending on the current navigation state. If more than one member record reflects that state, the system chooses which member record to return.