Endeca records contain the data that users navigate to or search for.

Endeca records are based on traditional records in a source database. Source database records typically contain information such as the bottles of wine in a wine store, the customer records in a CRM application, or the mutual funds in a fund evaluator.

Source database records store this information in one or more key/value pairs, known as properties. This information becomes available to your application when you transform the source database records into Endeca records. To transform the source database records into Endeca records, you must map the source record properties to properties of Endeca records.

Thus, dimensions and Endeca records correspond to the properties of source database records. Like source record properties, Endeca properties are key/value pairs.

The following figure illustrates key/value pairs in a simple Endeca record:

A single Endeca record can correspond to any number of source records. For example, suppose that four different source records refer to the same book in different formats: hardcover, paperback, large print, and audio. You can configure your Guided Search application to combine the information in these four source records into a single Endeca record.