How does federated search work?
Federated search engines use software “connectors” to access information sources. The federated search engine takes the user’s search query, transforms the search terms to match each content source’s requirements, and submits the query to each of the sources simultaneously. When the search results come back from each of the sources, the federated search engine merges them together, modifying the look and feel of each of the result pages to have a single look and feel.