What the Data for This Category Looks Like
Steel trade research report data mainly comes from supply and demand reports released by domestic steel industry associations, steel product trading data from the Shanghai Futures Exchange, production and sales briefings from domestic key steel mills, and trade monitoring reports from third-party bulk commodity consulting institutions. Update frequencies vary: futures trading data is updated daily, steel mill production and sales briefings are updated weekly, third-party monitoring reports are released every two weeks, and industry association reports are updated with a 1 to 2 week delay. A single research report usually includes core price indices, regional spot price spreads, port inventory data, trade circulation statistics, and downstream steel demand forecasts. Fields include price (yuan/ton), inventory (10,000 tons), circulation volume (10,000 tons), policy document number, and forecast period. Some reports also include specific data on regional trade routes.
Constraints Imposed on Workflow Orchestration by These Characteristics
Differences in update frequencies across multiple data sources require workflows to support triggering corresponding nodes at different cycles. This prevents repeated pulling of outdated data or missing the latest industry updates. Research reports have numerous fields and unit discrepancies. Some sources provide inventory data in tons, while others use 10,000 tons. Workflows must include field validation and unit conversion nodes to ensure consistency for downstream analysis. Single research reports can be lengthy, with some containing multi-chapter deep analysis. Workflows require configured segment parsing and associated recall nodes to avoid truncating core supply and demand data. Steel trade data has strong timeliness. Nodes that do not complete within the allowed time will make the data lose reference value. Reasonable node timeout thresholds and retry mechanisms must be set.
Configuration Settings
| Configuration Item | Recommended Setting | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
maxContext | 15–20 conversation contexts | Steel trade research report analysis involves cross-cycle supply and demand data correlation. 15-20 contexts cover approximately 2 months of conversation history, avoiding context overload that affects analysis accuracy |
PARSE_FILE_TIMEOUT_SECONDS | 600 seconds | Single steel trade research reports usually contain multi-chapter long text content. 600 seconds allows complete parsing, avoiding timeout errors triggered by excessive content length |
RECALL_TOP_N | Top 8 recall results | Core information of steel trade research reports is concentrated in three dimensions: price, inventory, and flow direction. 8 results cover full-dimensional associated data, avoiding redundant results interfering with analysis |
SIMILARITY_THRESHOLD | 0.75–0.8 | Steel trade has a large number of technical terms and industry-specific expressions. A threshold of 0.75 filters low-relevance general text and retains accurate industry data |
WORKFLOW_TRIGGER_CRON | 0 9 * * 1,3,5 | Core spot and futures data for steel trade is updated mid-week. Triggering at 9 AM every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday allows access to the latest industry updates |
FIELD_MAPPING_RULE | Unify conversion to standard units | Research reports from different sources have unit differences. Unifying conversion to 10,000 tons and yuan/ton ensures consistency for downstream analysis |
The parameter values provided on this page are common recommended starting points for configuration. Actual values are affected by material form, data volume, and business rules. Specific issues require targeted analysis. It is recommended to test on your own samples before finalizing settings.
Three Common Misconfigurations
- Phenomenon: The workflow parsing node triggers a timeout error after exceeding the preset time, and the log shows the
ETIMEDOUTstatus code. Cause: ThePARSE_FILE_TIMEOUT_SECONDSparameter was not adjusted for the long text content of steel trade research reports. The default timeout duration is insufficient to complete full parsing. - Phenomenon: The web scraping node configured in the workflow fails to load official pages of steel industry research reports. Cause: Correct request header parameters were not configured. Some industry association websites block automated requests without request headers.
- Phenomenon: The research report retrieval tool orchestrated in the workflow cannot maintain multi-turn conversations. On version v4.8.10, subsequent user questions fail to associate previously referenced research report data. Cause: The
maxContextparameter was not set to a value greater than 0. No historical conversation context is passed when calling the API each time, making multi-turn association impossible.
How to Verify Proper Configuration
- A complete workflow run is initiated, and the execution logs of each node are reviewed. Confirm that all data pulling nodes obtain the latest data from their corresponding sources, and the parsing nodes have no text truncation or field missing errors.
- Multi-turn test conversations are launched, with continuous questions related to steel trade research reports input. Confirm that the tool can associate inventory, price, and other data mentioned in previous conversations to enable coherent analysis.
- The workflow timeout configuration is checked, confirming that the
PARSE_FILE_TIMEOUT_SECONDSvalue matches the parsing duration of a single research report. Adjust the parameter via a single parsing test if needed. - The configuration records of the field mapping rule are reviewed, confirming that units from all different research reports have been uniformly converted to standard units, with no format errors or field omissions.
Question material comes from public community discussions. Configuration values are common starting points and should be measured against your own samples. Verified on 2026-09-14.