What the data for this category looks like
Data sources for steel trade-related research reports include domestic bulk commodity industry information institutions, steel industry associations, public reports from futures trading markets, and internal inventory and market trend records of traders. Update cycles cover daily spot prices, weekly inventory data, monthly industry supply and demand analysis, and quarterly and annual in-depth reports. Document structures typically include market overviews, core data tables, trade flow analysis, risk reminders, and other modules. Fields include release date, trading variety (such as rebar, hot-rolled coil), price range (unit: yuan/ton), total inventory (unit: ton), trade volume, and others. The length of individual documents varies widely, from hundreds of words of daily market briefings to tens of thousands of words of annual industry analysis reports.
What constraints do these characteristics impose on knowledge base retrieval and recall?
The multi-dimensional update rhythm of steel trade research reports requires the knowledge base to support switching between incremental and full updates based on time granularity, avoiding repeated loading of expired data. The professional attributes of multiple fields and specific units require the retrieval link to support field-level precise matching and unit semantic association, preventing confusion between data of different varieties or units. The large span of document lengths requires the segmented recall strategy to adapt to documents of varying lengths. It ensures complete semantics for short documents while avoiding excessive splitting of key information in long documents. The high density of professional terms requires the retrieval model to accurately recognize industry terms, reducing the mismatch rate of semantic retrieval.
How to set configurations
| Configuration Item | Recommended Value | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
chunkSize | 800–1200 characters | Steel trade research reports contain a large number of professional numerical values with units and detailed variety terms. Overly long segments will split semantic connections, while overly short segments will damage the integrity of professional expressions |
similarityThreshold | 0.65–0.75 | Steel industry terms have high recognition. A threshold that is too low will introduce irrelevant industry reports, while a threshold that is too high will miss relevant data of detailed varieties |
recallTopK | Top 8 results | Single research reports have high effective information density. Too many recalled results will cause context redundancy, while too few will fail to cover multi-dimensional needs in trade scenarios |
UPLOAD_FILE_MAX_SIZE | 50 MB | Single monthly research reports usually do not exceed 10 MB. This value can accommodate batch-uploaded quarterly and annual reports |
PARSE_FILE_TIMEOUT_SECONDS | 300 seconds | Long document parsing requires processing a large number of tables and text splitting. An overly short timeout will cause parsing failure for large files |
rerankTopN | Top 3 results | The re-ranking link needs to focus on the most relevant core research report content, to avoid redundant information interfering with the accuracy of the final answer |
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 specific analysis. It is recommended to test on your own samples before finalizing the settings.
Three common configuration mistakes
- Phenomenon: Semantic retrieval scores appear as integers above 4000, outside the conventional 0-1 floating-point range. Cause: The retrieval engine’s score normalization option is not configured, so original vector calculation scores are returned.
- Phenomenon: When calling retrieval results via API, the source file name and path for matched content cannot be retrieved. Cause: The knowledge base’s metadata collection function is not enabled, so no association between retrieval segments and source files is established.
- Phenomenon: Some key data paragraphs are not recalled in batch-uploaded long-cycle research reports. Cause: The segmented length setting exceeds the semantic boundary of professional terms and data tables, causing split key information to fail to match user queries.
How to confirm correct configuration
- Upload a monthly steel supply and demand research report larger than 8 MB, confirm the parsing task has no timeout errors and content segments are complete.
- Initiate a query with specific steel varieties and price units, verify that recalled results include professional data from the corresponding field.
- Call the API retrieval interface, confirm returned results include the source file name and affiliated knowledge base identifier.
- Adjust the segmented length parameter, verify that key paragraphs of long documents are correctly recalled.
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.