Product Overview
Before looking at the features of this tool, it is worthwhile to review the most common bar code symbologies in use and which bar code symbologies Barcode Professional supports.
As you can see, there are many new bar code types available with this new release, especially mail bar codes from several countries. This is very helpful for those who are developing projects in those countries. MSI, PZN, ISMN, ESBN are the most important of the newly introduced bar code types. Also, there are many variations included in this new release.
Let us imagine a case for this. Assume that to capture physical stock we need to stick a label with stock items in those items. We will assume that it needs a product code, description and bar code.
First of all, we need to create a SQL Server Report Service (SSRS) project in the SQL Server Business Intelligence Development Studio. If we are using Barcode Professional for the first time, we need to add this to the tool bar.
For our purpose, we need to have a tabular report format and we can select needed data from the AdventureWorks database using the following query.
select ProductID,Name,ProductNumber from Production.Product
There will be an additional column to display the bar code of ProductNumber. We can insert a new column, drag the bar code tool from the toolbox and drop it on the column, then attach the column by right clicking on it and selecting properties. Yes, that’s all we need to do. When run, the report will be “bar code enabled!”
There are few other advanced features available with Barcode Professional that we will get when we select the properties option of the bar code. Three of the four tabs on the properties dialog are important for us.
Bar Code Tab
This is the most important tab in the tool. Basically, this is where we can control its functionalities.
From this tab, we can select value we want to encode by choosing a field from the available list. Also, we can define the height and width of the bar code.
