Custom Development
ED Inventory
ED Inventory lets engineers and buyers search over 7 million electronic parts and compare real-time pricing from more than 20 of the world's leading distributors, DigiKey, Mouser, Farnell and Texas Instruments among them. Behind the simple search box sits some serious engineering.
About
Millions of parts, answers in seconds
When Electronics Datasheets, already a Strategies client, planned a parts comparison platform, the technical brief was formidable: hold tens of millions of database records, keep pricing and stock current across dozens of distributor feeds, and still return search results in seconds. We architected, designed and built the entire platform, and we continue to develop it today.
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The challenge
Big data, fast answers, no compromise
A parts comparison site lives or dies on two things: completeness and speed. Engineers won’t use a tool that’s missing parts, and they won’t wait for one that’s slow. That meant ingesting inventory and pricing from some of the world’s largest component distributors, each with different data formats and update cycles, into a database of tens of millions of records that any visitor could interrogate instantly. Conventional web technology wasn’t going to cut it.
The solution
Engineered for scale from day one
We selected MongoDB and Elasticsearch as the platform’s foundations, purpose-built technologies for exactly this combination of massive data and instant search. Custom ingestion systems handle every distributor’s preferred method, direct API integration for some, automated processing of CSV and spreadsheet feeds for others, keeping millions of prices and stock levels current with minimal human intervention. On top sits a clean, intuitive design extending the established EDS brand, where users search by part, browse by category, compare distributors side by side and click through to buy from authorised suppliers. A free BOM tool completes the platform, evaluating entire bills of materials in moments to improve order accuracy.
The impact
A platform the industry actually uses
Years after launch, ED Inventory is still live, still growing and still carrying our name in its footer. Engineers search millions of parts daily across categories from semiconductors to test equipment, the world’s biggest distributors supply their data to it, and the platform sits alongside Electronics Datasheets and Student Circuit in a suite of sites we’ve built for the same client, the kind of repeat business that says more than any pitch.
