Barcodes Longer Than 10 Characters In Length

TapeTrack has a Volume-ID limit of 10 characters in length.

Any volumes with an ID longer than 10 characters must be modified to fit within this criteria.

There are several ways in which can be achieved, such as truncation, translation or hashing.

Truncating a barcode, or Volume-ID, involves trimming off the start or end down to 10 or fewer characters, or removing characters from the center via masking.

Truncating a barcode can be achieved by several different methods.

Barcodes can be truncated via the TapeTrack Scan window in TapeMaster, Lite and Checkpoint.

For detailed information please see Truncating a barcode via the scan window.

Truncation of a barcode by removing the suffix (eg. removing L6 from 1234567890L6) can be achieved by setting the Remove Suffix option in the media properties via TapeMaster.

Truncating a barcode via the media properties tab. Adding L6 in the Remove Suffix field will remove L6 from any matching volume-ID (eg removing L6 from 1234567890L6 to input as 1234567890 or 123456L6 as 123456) regardless of barcode length.

Adding L* will remove any 2 digit suffix from the volume-ID that starts with L (eg. 123456L6 will truncate to 123456, 1000000001L3 will truncate to 1000000001)

Translating a barcode, or volume-ID, involves swapping a recognizable pattern for an alternate value within the 10 character limit via translation statements in a ttidef file.

Using a translation statement AddTranslation(VOLUME, “A6??????????”, “^^~~~~~~~~~~”); in the ttidef file, any 12 character volume-ID starting with A6, such as A61234567890, will drop the first two characters and keep the next 10, inputting as 1234567890.

Hashing a barcode, or volume-ID, involves replacing the barcode with its 8 character hashed value, preceded by the value #- to allow identification that the volume-ID has been hashed.

Reasons for hashing a barcode include extended length barcodes (11 characters or more) and barcodes that have spaces or other illegal characters.

It is a good practice to put the true, or un-hashed, barcode in the Attribute field to enable a human readable value as well as the hashed volume-ID.

Adding the un-hashed barcode to an extended attribute field can be manually added using the Paste Long Barcode function or automated by setting the field Long Barcode Attribute in the Customer Properties Options tab to the required Attribute field.

Long Volume-ID's can be Scanned-In to TapeTrack TapeMaster and hashed simultaneously by placing a # in the Edit field of the Scan window.

Once the Volumes have been added, the long barcode can be added to the Description (or other Attribute) field using the Paste Long Barcode function or added to an extended attribute field automatically by setting the field Long Barcode Attribute in the Customer Properties Options tab to the required Attribute field.

Using a translation statement AddTranslation(VOLUME, “???????????*”, “#”); in the ttidef file, any 11 character or longer volume-ID will be hashed, for example 111111222222 would be hashed to X-2E8CA12F

Using a translation statement AddTranslation(VOLUME, “*? ?*”, “#”); in the ttidef file, any barcode with a space (the space can be replaced with any other illegal character) will be hashed, for example Monday 01 would be hashed to X-DCD72719.

Using the translation code block below in the configuration files will hash any 11 character or longer volume-ID's.

barcodes=
{
   translations=
   (
      { filter="???????????*"; value="#"; }
   );
};

Using the translation code block below in the configuration files will any barcode with spaces.

barcodes=
{
   translations=
   (
      { filter="*? ?*"; value="#"; }
   );
};