The following supported symbologies only supports numerical data and in some cases special characters like "-,+,:,$" . A more detailed description and example of each barcode is given in Short description of supported symbologies
Codabar. Older code not widely used today apart from some library system primarily in USA.
Code 11. Used primarily for labeling telecommunications equipment
EAN-13 (ISO/IEC 15420). European Article Numbering, 13-digits. International retail product code
(Also known as UPC-13 in USA)
EAN-8. European Article Numbering, 8-digits. Compressed version of EAN code for use on small products
Industrial 2 of 5. Older low density code not commonly used today
Interleaved 2 of 5 (ISO/IEC 16390). Compact numeric code, widely used in industry, driving licenses, transportation
UPC-A. Universal product code seen on almost all retail products in the USA and Canada
UPC-E. Compressed version of UPC-A code for use on small products
Bookland. Used to encode ISBN (International Standard Book Number) numbers used in book and magazines
The following supported symbologies supports alpha numerical data and in some cases special characters like "-,+,&,#,!". A more detailed description and example of each barcode is given in Short description of supported symbologies
Code 128 (ISO/IEC 15417). A flexible high capacity code in wide use. There are variants of Code 128 (e.g EAN-128) that impose a strict structure of the data.
EAN 128 (ISO/IEC 15420). Structured variant of Code 128. This is not really a barcode symbology in itself but rather a structure for how to format the input data to Code 128.
Code 39 (ISO/IEC 16388). General purpose code. Used worldwide.
Usually the application dictates what standard should be followed and there is no choice other than following the applicable industry standard.
However, if the usage is strictly internal it is possible to chose any symbology. However for generic usage we would recommends using either Code 39 or Code 128 since they offer great flexibility, supports large character sets and is fairly efficient in terms of space/datasize ratio.