What the documents look like
B2B marketplace matching involves platform operators, suppliers, and enterprise buyers. The daily documents include enterprise certification materials, request-for-quotation and quotation sheets, electronic contracts, and platform settlement statements. Compared with wholesale market stall transactions, online certification and electronic contracts are more common, and transactions do not depend on a physical stall. Materials update daily and per order.
Retrieval faces a mixed set of entity names, quotation terms, contract statuses, and settlement records. Enterprise certification materials and electronic contracts are outputs of review and signing stages, while quotation sheets are outputs of the matching stage. When these documents coexist in one knowledge base, a search term can match content of different natures at the same time, so recalled results need to be checked separately by material source and field meaning.
A hypothetical paper exercise sample, written for this page and not drawn from any real customer or registration record:
Material text one, supplier profile card: "Supplier name is Hualing Electromechanical Parts Co., Ltd.; certification status is paper materials submitted, platform review in progress; supply categories are bearings and couplings."
Material text two, quotation sheet: "Inquiry party is Hualing Electromechanical Parts Co., Ltd.; quoted item is deep groove ball bearing 6205; quotation validity period is March 1, 2025 to March 31, 2025; supply lead time is to be confirmed separately after signing."
Draft sentence to be assessed: "Hualing Electromechanical Parts Co., Ltd. has passed platform certification and can supply directly within the quotation validity period."
Constraints at the retrieval step
The knowledge base search node can associate one or more knowledge bases that use the same vector model. Semantic retrieval depends on vector distance, full-text retrieval depends on keyword hits, hybrid retrieval merges the two paths through RRF, and result reranking uses a ReRank model for a second ordering. The minimum relevance score takes effect only in semantic retrieval or when result reranking is used; it is a filtering threshold, not a ranking rule. The citation limit is measured in tokens. Question optimization performs coreference resolution and question expansion, and adds one model call.
The retrieval step itself does not perform permission judgment. Vector similarity does not distinguish whether an enterprise entity has been authorized, nor whether a record falls within the current procurement scope. Citation content is output as an array, and its length can be 0, meaning the output path still runs even when nothing is found. Retrieval only completes recall; business verification, approval, database writes, and external synchronization require separately implemented steps and are not treated as completed on this page.
Configuration and implementation checks
| Configuration item | Hypothetical trial starting point for this exercise | Reason for the choice and comparison object |
|---|---|---|
| Associated knowledge bases | Associate only one base holding supplier profiles and quotation sheets | That base uses the same vector model; bases with other vector models are not associated together |
| Search mode | Start with hybrid retrieval | Compare item by item against semantic-only and full-text-only results, observing whether identifier-type terms are hit |
| Citation limit | Start at a token amount that can hold both material texts | Test with materials of different lengths to see whether content is truncated, then compare against a larger limit |
| Minimum relevance score | Start at a medium value | Label relevant and irrelevant samples first, then compare against higher and lower thresholds |
| Question optimization | Enable first in multi-turn follow-up scenarios | Compare retrieval results from the original question and the optimized question, checking whether the subject was altered |
| Result reranking | Enable when a ReRank model is available | Compare ordering before and after enabling, observing rerank scores and vector scores separately |
These values are hypothetical trial starting points for this exercise, not official default values.
Three common errors
- Reading "certification status is review in progress" as certification passed. Material text one records only that paper materials were submitted and platform review is in progress. The draft sentence states that platform certification has been passed, which is a judgment beyond the source text. Check action: input the draft sentence and material text one, compare the value of the certification status field, and observe whether the draft sentence agrees with the source text.
- Treating the quotation validity period as the supply lead time. Material text two records only that the quotation validity period runs to March 31, 2025, and that supply lead time is to be confirmed separately after signing. The draft sentence states that supply can proceed directly within the validity period, conflating two fields. Check action: input the draft sentence and material text two, compare the two expressions for quotation validity period and supply lead time, and observe whether one substitutes for the other.
- Treating a retrieval hit as authorization confirmation. Returned citation content shows only that a vector or keyword match occurred; it does not show that the supplier has obtained procurement authorization. Check action: input a retrieval request containing only the supplier name, compare the returned citations against the status fields in the source materials, and observe whether an authorization conclusion appears in the citations.
How to verify the setup
- For the draft sentence "Hualing Electromechanical Parts Co., Ltd. has passed platform certification and can supply directly within the quotation validity period," input material text one and material text two, and compare the certification status field and the supply lead time field. The condition is met only when the draft sentence agrees with both source passages; in this sample the draft sentence does not agree with the source text.
- For the quotation validity period field, input material text two, and compare whether the quotation validity period and the supply lead time are the same field. The condition is met only when the two are not substituted for each other; in this sample the two expressions differ.
- For empty-result handling, input a retrieval request explicitly marked as a paper input whose citation content is []. Compare whether the downstream design handles a length of 0. The condition is met only when the output path still runs with empty citations. This check verifies downstream handling and does not indicate that any invented rule returns an empty result.
Missing evidence remains missing. A pending review does not by itself show a lack of operating authority. Signing, reaching cooperation, and contract effectiveness are three distinct facts. A quotation validity period does not indicate a supply lead time.