DataBar family formerly referred to as Reduced Space Symbology, or RSS, adopted its official new name GS1 DataBar on February 12, 2007. The GS1 board, formerly known as UCC/EAN organization, has declared that “GS1 DataBar symbols and GS1 Application Identifiers shall be available in all trade item scanning systems beginning Jan 1, 2010.”[8]
GS1 DataBar is really a family of bar code symbologies. Some are very small, intended for produce and small consumer packages. And some are larger, intended to carry more data needed for identifying variable-measure foods and the required content on coupons. Some can be read omnidirectionaly, which makes them perfectly suitable for POS applications.
Table 14.5. GS1 DataBar Family
| Variant | Data Encoded | POS | Applications | Sample Barcode |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| DataBar Omnidirectional | 14-digit GTIN | Yes | Packaged goods |
|
| DataBar Stacked Omnidirectional | 14-digit GTIN | Yes | Packaged goods, Produce |
|
| DataBar Expanded | Any GS1-128 data, up to 74 digits or 41 alphanumeric | Yes | Variable-measure food, Coupons |
|
| DataBar Expanded Stacked | Any GS1-128 data, up to 74 digits or 41 alphanumeric | Yes | Variable-measure food, Coupons |
|
| DataBar Truncated | 14-digit GTIN | No | Health care item |
|
| DataBar Stacked | 14-digit GTIN | No | Health care item |
|
| DataBar Limited | 14-digit GTIN | No | Health care item |
|
Among the seven variants, four, DataBar-14, DataBar Stacked Omni, DataBar Expanded and DataBar Expanded Stacked were designed and specifically to work at retail POS because they can be omnidirectionally read. The remaining three, DataBar Truncated, DataBar Stacked, and DataBar Limited, are not recommended to work at retail POS and were design for very very small products (such as healthcare items).
All DataBar symbologies except DataBar Expanded and DataBar Expanded Stacked require 13 digit or 14 digits as input (the GTIN number). The last check digit is not actually encoded into the barcode. Scanners are required to calculate the check digit and transmit it together upon reading the barcode.
Note
The GS1-128 application
identifier for GTIN, 01, is required to transmit back
with 14-digit data. Therefore, a standard complaint scanner will
transmit 0104412345678909 upon reading a DataBar barcode with GTIN number
04412345678909 encoded.
GTIN is the acronym for Global Trade Item Number, a 14-digit number that identifies trade items developed by GS1 organization. This number have many names, such as SCC-14 (Serial Container Code), UCC-14.
GTIN can be derived from UPC-A or EAN-13 numbers. The first digit is package indicator. Digit '0' and '9' have special meanings here - '0' often means that there is one item in the box, and '9' indicates a variable measure item. The package indicator is followed by GS1 company prefix (assigned by GS1) and item number (assigned by the company). They should be in total of 12 digits. This portion is the same as the first 12 digits in an EAN-13 number, or '0' plus the first 11 digits in a UPC-A number. The last digit is checksum, which is calculated based on Mod10 algorithm on previous 13 digits.
Because UPC-A and EAN-13 numbers can be thought as special cases of GTINs (the package indicator is '0'), a 14-digit GTIN unqiuely identifies any trade item (a single item or a container).
GTIN is often depicted using Interleaved 2 of 5 or GS1-128 symbologies. This is expected to change as GS1 is endorsing DataBar. The benefits of using DataBar is that it produces more compact barcodes, espcially when comparing with UPC-A and EAN-13 symbols. Furthermore, DataBar Expanded allows additional information to be encoded, such as serial number, weight or price.
DataBar Truncated and DataBar Stacked symbols have their height fixed to its X-dimension. That is, you can not change the height by modifying BarHeight property. They are always 13X.
In DataBar Stacked Omnidirectional and DataBar Expanded Stacked symbols, the overall size of the barcode (excluding human readable text and other elements) is not the same as BarHeight, because multiple rows exist.
To achieve omnidirectional scannability and standard conformance, the following minimum height should be observed for DataBar-14, DataBar Stacked Omnidirectional, and DataBar Expanded (X=NarrowBarWidth):
DataBar: 33X
DataBar Stacked Omni: 33X
DataBar Limited: 10X
DataBar Expanded: 34X
DataBar Expanded Stacked: 34X
The widths of stacked symbols (DataBar Stacked etc.) can be very small to hold the human readable text in one line. When this happens, the human readable text will wrap into multiple lines. If this is not desired, turn the human readable text off and set it to the comment. You can set comment margin properties CommentMarginLeft and CommentMarginRight to adjust the with of comment block.
|
|
| Normal (comment off, human readable on) | human readable off, comment on, CommentMarginLeft=200 mils |
DataBar Expanded and DataBar Expanded Stacked usually encode a GTIN number plus additional information, such as price, weight, expiration date and so on. Moreover, any GS1-128 data can be encoded in DataBar Expanded and DataBar Expanded Stacked.
Although they are referred separately, DataBar Expanded Stacked is a superset of DataBar Expanded. Any DataBar Expanded symbols are also DataBar Expanded Stacked symbols. Therefore, in our implementation we use DataBar Expanded for both cases, you create DataBar Expanded Stacked symbols by setting symbols per row value to a non-zero value.
Because the support for DataBar Expanded is added in version 3.4, and we did not want to add additonal properties to break backward compatiblity, we choose an existing property, PDFMaxCols for this purpose. By default, PDFMaxCols is set to zero, which creates a non-stacked DataBar Expanded barcode. To create a DataBar Expanded Stacked barcode, set this property to an even number between 2 and 22. [9]
Warning
DataBar Expanded is not availabel in Barcode ActiveX Lite. Professional version is required to create DataBar Expanded symbols.
For all DataBar symbologies except DataBar Expanded and DataBar Expanded Stack, the input is required to be a 13-digit GTIN number. You can also enter 14 digits, however, the last digit is ignored. Excessive input will be truncated.
The input format for DataBar Expanded and DataBar Expanded Stacked
is identical to the
one specified in Section 14.12, “UCC/EAN-128”. AIs must
be enclosed in parentheses. Barcode ActiveX will parse the data according
to rules set by Application Identifiers. For example, input
(01)90012345678908(3103)012233(15)081231
is valid, which encodes the following information: GTIN 0012345678908,
weight 12.233Kilogram, and production date Dec. 31, 2008.
In the input for DataBar Expanded, spaces can appear as part of input, and they are preserved in the human readable text. However, spaces are not part of the data and are not encoded into the barcode.
[8] Dubbed as “GS1 DataBar Sunrise 2010.” For more information, see http://www.gs1.org/databar/.
[9] A DataBar Expanded symbol can hold 22 symbol characters. Setting PDFMaxCols to 22 or a large number effectively creates non-stacked barcodes.