barcode reader

[yxez]

Hi friends,

I want to develop a payment system that can read bar codes like the ones used in groceries to capture price info, can u tell
me what tools should i used to integrate into oracle. Does oracle
have this functional specs.

Thanks

[TimHall]

Hi.

You are going to need a scanner to actually read the physical barcodes, and these send back an ASCII string representation of the barcode. This is usually printed as the actual numbers or letters beneath the barcode itself. As a result, Oracle doesn't need to be able to read barcodes, since it will only ever be presented with ASCII data.

Just so you know, the barcodes on the items in a store do not actually contain the prices. They are simply a unique identifier of the product. When these are scanned, the identifier represented by the barcode is used to look up the price from their database.

So a simple solution might be:

CREATE TABLE items (
  barcode       VARCHAR2(50),
  description   VARCHAR2(50),
  manufacturer  VARCHAR2(100),
  price         NUMBER(9,2),
  CONSTRAINT items_pk PRIMARY KEY (barcode)
);

INSERT INTO items VALUES ('123456', 'Tomato Soup', 'Heinz', 0.69);
INSERT INTO items VALUES ('654321', 'Chicken Soup', 'Heinz', 0.75);
COMMIT;

The scanner reads the barcode off a tin and produces the string representation of the barcode (123456). The scanner then uses this to request the relevant information from the database:

SELECT description, manufacturer, price
FROM   items
WHERE  barcode = '123456';


DESCRIPTION   MANUFACTURER   PRICE
------------- -------------- ----------
Tomato Soup   Heinz                 .69

1 row selected.

SQL>

This information can then be displayed and used to calculate the total price of your shopping!

Cheers

Tim...

[yxez]

Wow!!! impressive!....you are really an excellent teacher dear...very
clear said.
By the way, im planning to develop this system thru APEX (htmldb)
I wonder it has the functionality to capture the barcode output then
pass it to the program. would you know?

I observed my friends system in VB....the barcode is attached to the
keyboard port and then a key triggers the capture of the output
which is entered into the form field. I wonder if i can use other ports
for it...since i still need the key-board to enter other info.

Thanks

[TimHall]

Hi.

I'm afraid I know very little about APEX, so I'm not the man t help you on that score.

There are many different scanner solutions on the market. I guess you need to talk to the manufacturers and see what their kit does, before you can decide how yo will implement it.

Cheers

Tim...

[hrishy]

Hi

replying from the thread in admin forum since that thread is closed becoz of duplicates.

You can call a Java class from pl/sql which is nothing but apex (if i understand it right)

refer here on how to call a java class from pl/sql
http://www.unix.org.ua/orelly/oracle...8i/ch09_03.htm

regards
Hrishy

[yxez]

Thanks again.....im so surprised u r so helpful and accomodating