Where can I find a database of what information the barcodes hold?

Where can I find a database of what information the barcodes hold?
I want to get a cheap barcode scanner to help me keep personal inventory of food, sundries, and my library collection. However, will I have to go in an tell my computer what each barcode stands for or is there a place that I can go to have the barcode translated? That is, can I scan a can of peas and then have it tell me that brand, size, and type? Or must I enter all that in the first time?

Best answer:

How Do I Get A List Of All The Product Codes And Their Respective Manufacturers?

This is the second most asked questions here at BarCode 1. Why is this question asked? There are several reasons. If someone is opening up a hardware store, for example, it would save a lot of work to have a database of all the product numbers of the products carried by the store with their descriptions. The store, of course, would still have to enter the selling price for each product. The second reason for such a list is to identify the company that made the product.

There is now a complete, free on-line database that allows anyone to type in a UPC or EAN number and get the company name and address for the product. It is a project developed by GS1 and is called GEPIR. The number contained in the UPC or EAN barcode is now called the Global Trade Item Number or GTIN. You can go directly to the UPC and EAN search page by clicking here. Please note that sometimes GEPIR is down. If you get a “page not available”, try later. Currently, the database does not return the product description. It only returns the company name and address. Some records may contain the telephone number of the company. The web service is based on XML, so it is possible to integrate an application program with this database. That means that it will be possible for a small store to scan the barcode on a product, access GEPIR over the internet, and download product and manufacturer information over the internet to build a local database of products in the store for free. GEPIR is under continuous development and will soon also provide product images, dimensions, carton sizes, tracking and tracing data. This database is open to consumers as well as companies (unlike UCCNet, a project of the Uniform Code Council).

There is a site which provides product descriptions. It’s called the Universal Product Code Database, an on-line database for Universal Product Codes (UPC).

You now can purchase a UPC database from Gregg London.

The UPC Database Project is another public UPC database from Glenn J. Schworak. The site also has links to other UPC databases.

Swiss companies and EAN/UPC codes can be looked up at EAN Switzerland.

If you are opening a store, you should ask your suppliers if they have their UPC product codes in a database you can download. If you have to build your database by hand, the best structure is to have a database entry system that allows you to scan the UPC on a product and then key in the description. That way you make use of the UPC bar code for at least some of the data entry.

1SYNC (former UCCNet) is a project of GS1-US to synchronize data between trading partners. Unfortunately, there is no “public access” to the data being stored. If you are Wal-Mart or Home Depot, you can synchronize data from suppliers. If you are a small one or two lane Grocery store, you will NOT be able to obtain the databases from Pepsi – as an example.
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Tags: barcodes, database, find, hold, information

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