Data Sources Property Page

The Data Source tab controls the name and data source type for the data source that is currently selected in the Navigation Pane. It contains the following options:

• Name: Displays the name of the data source, if one is specified.

  Opens the Change Data Source Name Wizard, which enables you to specify a unique name for the selected data source. By naming the data source, you can share the contents of the selected data source with another data source or refer to the data source in a VBScript. For more information about using named data sources, refer to Naming and Sharing Data Sources.

• Type: Displays the data source type of the selected data source.

  Opens the Change Data Source Type Wizard, which specifies the source of the data that will be printed in the selected data source. For more information, refer to Selecting a Data Source.

Each of the different data source types has its own set of options. Instead of displaying all of the options for the different data source types at once, the Data Source tab includes a dynamic area that changes to display only those options that are relevant to the data source that you have specified. Each of these options is described in detail in Selecting a Data Source.

Specify the data type for the selected data source on the Data Type tab to prevent BarTender from interpreting certain data inputs, such as numerical values, dates, or binary data, as text. This enables you to perform mathematical functions on numerical values or display the time and date in a different language's format without changing the language of the application. By changing the data type of a value, you can easily format and display scientific notation, automatically display numbers as percentages, format and serialize roman numerals, or perform functions on date objects.

Each of the different data types has its own set of options. The Data Type tab includes a dynamic area that changes to display only those options that are relevant to the data type that you have specified. For more information about the options that are available for each data type, select the data type that you want in the following list.

BarTender supports the following data types:

• Text

• Date

• Time

• Number

• Currency

• Percentage

• Fraction

• Binary

• Picture

You can access additional options that are used to modify (or "transform") a data source, such as serialization and truncation, on the Transforms tab. To configure these options, click the icon next to the option that you want. The selection of available transforms will vary based on the selected data type and will include one or more of the following:

• Suppression: Enables you to ignore the contents of the selected data source under certain conditions.

• Compression: Condenses Picture or Binary data sources for use in barcodes or encoder objects.

• Character Filter: Forces data to conform to specified rules.

• Offset: Adds or subtracts a specified amount of time from the data source.

• Range Checking: Specifies a range of allowable dates for the selected data source.

• Truncation: Removes unwanted characters and spaces from data.

• Number of Characters: Specifies the minimum and maximum number of characters that can be entered.

• Character Template: Specifies extra characters in a data source's text that are not part of its data string.

• Search and Replace: Searches for specific text or characters in the data source and replaces it with the specified text.

• VBScript: Enables you to write Visual Basic Scripts to perform custom data processing or validation.

• Serialization: Specifies how data is to be incremented or decremented.

• Prefix and Suffix: Specifies the text that can be appended to the selected data source.