Commodity data must identify the product and contract rather than relying on labels such as oil or wheat.
A spot reference, a dated futures contract and a continuous chart series are separate datasets. Preserve expiry, quotation units and currency where relevant; a change from dollars per barrel to cents per unit cannot be handled by symbol renaming alone.
For continuous series, document the roll rule and any historical adjustment. Keep the underlying dated contracts accessible in the data model so a chart adjustment is not mistaken for an observed market trade.
Bring the proposed instrument list, source documentation and consumer workflow to a technical discussion. The agreed integration specification defines coverage, fields, usage permissions and acceptance tests.
| Instrument scope | Identify the exact underlying, source identifier, quote currency and intended use. |
|---|---|
| Consumer workflow | List trading platforms, charts, risk tools and applications that need the output. |
| Delivery contract | Agree protocol, quote fields, timestamps, source status and recovery behaviour. |
| Production review | Confirm source rights, integration ownership, test evidence and commercial scope. |
For energy and commodities, define who consumes the prices and what each system needs to reconstruct a usable quote. An application dashboard, broker platform and historical process can require different delivery rules even when they share one normalized instrument model.
{
"type": "quote",
"symbol": "EURUSD",
"bid": "1.10000",
"ask": "1.10010",
"source_time": "2026-10-18T12:00:00.000Z",
"received_at": "2026-10-18T12:00:00.012Z",
"source_id": "example-source",
"status": "illustrative"
}Illustrative engineering example, not live prices or a published API contract. Confirm field names and delivery rules during integration.