Selection of Barcode Symbology

The choice of symbology is often industry specific. In other cases, where no convention exists to specify the symbology we suggest:

Code 128 for limited length (less than 50 characters or so) of alpha-numerical data. It conserves space and protects the data with a checksum
Code 93 offers similar benefits and conserves space even more.
PDF417 is an efficient code when large amount alpha-numerical data or binary data should be encoded. It offers flexible geometry and variable levels of data protection. Symbols can be chained into multi symbol groups.
DataMatrix is an even more efficient code, that has fixed levels of error protection and a square geometry. The square symbols can be chained into multi symbol groups

See the Inlite Research Web site for more details on barcode standards.