What the data for this category looks like
Steel trade research report data primarily comes from four types of channels: monthly supply and demand reports from industry associations, real-time quotes from domestic spot trading platforms, factory price announcements from steel mills, and customs import and export statistical data. Update cycles cover daily (spot prices), weekly (inventory data), monthly (supply and demand balance sheets), and annual (industry trend reports). A single document typically includes structured fields such as product name, specification model, origin, tax-included price (yuan/ton), trading volume (10,000 tons), and social inventory (10,000 tons). Some in-depth research reports also add supplementary information such as regional price spreads and import and export tariffs.
What constraints do these characteristics impose on the citation source and traceability link?
Dispersed multi-source data channels require the traceability link to support cross-platform identifier matching, to avoid issues where the same data is repeatedly traced or cross-channel information is missed. Content with different update frequencies needs to correspond to different recall priorities. For example, daily spot prices should prioritize recalling the same-day data source, while annual trend reports can retain traceability entries for historical versions. The large number of structured fields and high unit uniformity requirements mean that if key information such as product name and specifications is not accurately extracted during traceability, users will not be able to locate specific data for the corresponding trade scenario. It is also necessary to uniformly handle unit expression differences across data sources to avoid unit confusion during citation.
Configuration Settings
| Configuration Item | Recommended Value | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
recall count | Top 6-10 entries | Steel trade research report data sources are scattered, and multiple channels including spot, industry associations, and customs need to be covered to avoid missing key trade data |
similarity threshold | 0.72-0.85 | The steel industry has a large number of exclusive terms and specification expressions. A threshold that is too low will introduce irrelevant content, while a threshold that is too high will fail to match accurate research report fragments |
PARSE_FILE_TIMEOUT_SECONDS | 300-600 seconds | A single steel trade research report contains multi-page data tables, requiring sufficient time to complete text parsing and structured field extraction |
citation snippet length | 800-1200 characters | It is necessary to include complete core trade information such as product name, specification, price, and trading volume to avoid missing information during traceability |
reordered return count | Top 3-5 entries | Steel trade users focus on core price and supply and demand data, prioritizing the display of the most relevant traceability results |
The parameter values provided on this page are conventional recommendations used to determine the starting point for configuration. Actual values are affected by material form, data volume, and business rules. Specific issues require specific analysis, and it is recommended to test on your own samples before finalizing settings.
Three Common Misconfigurations
- Symptom: When accessing the application via a non-login share link, the citation source module displays blank or prompts no permission. Cause: The "Allow public access to display citation sources" option is not enabled in the application configuration, or there is a compatibility vulnerability for this function in version 4.9.6.
- Symptom: After upgrading to version 4.9.7, no citation markers are displayed at the end of the knowledge base answer paragraphs. Cause: The "Attach citation sources at the end of answers" configuration switch is not enabled, or the citation snippet length is set too short to extract valid traceability information.
- Symptom: A 504 gateway timeout error occurs after initiating a steel trade research report search. Cause: The
PARSE_FILE_TIMEOUT_SECONDSsetting value is less than the parsing time of a single research report, or no retry mechanism is configured for data source interface response timeouts.
How to Confirm the Configuration Is Correctly Set
- Upload a test steel trade research report, initiate a search, and check whether citation source entries are displayed at the end of the answer.
- Copy the document identifier or link of any citation source, and confirm that the corresponding original data source page can be accessed.
- Adjust the recall count and similarity threshold, and compare the number and relevance of citation results under different configurations.
- Simulate a continuous questioning scenario, and confirm that contextually related answers still include correct citation traceability information.
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.