Aztec barcode vs QR-Code
I am trying to develop an application that will use tickets given the user the ability to validate them. I am wondering why I should choose Aztec barcode as many many companies have already chosen that instead of QR-Codes. What are the pros of the Aztec barcodes?
I good comparison I have found so far is: http://www.tec-it.com/en/support/knowbase/barcode-overview/2d-barcodes/Default.aspx
and here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aztec_Code on Usage section you can see that is used quite often.
Answer
Although Aztec Codes are more compact and tunable, there is poor support for them among open, non-proprietary software. I would still use QR Codes for now, which have very mature software support on a wide variety of platforms.
If space is at a premium for you, and you do not care for users to be able to read or generate your codes with their own software or on a wide variety of devices, then Aztec would be a better choice. Aztec codes do not require a surrounding margin, allow for very finely tunable error correction level, and have a tighter encoding optimized for a wider range of message texts.
For example, the Aztec codec has a mode specialized for encoding lowercase letters, so it could encode most of this question answer with only 5 bits per character. The QR codec is only optimized for uppercase URLs, and must store lowercase letters as full 8-bit binary data. A QR code containing this text would have to encode about 160% as much data as an Aztec code -- and then it needs a margin space too.
QR codes require more space than Aztec codes but have freely available software supporting them.
Aztec codes can store more information, but there is poor free support for them. They can be harder to read and generate efficiently, right now.
On an Android phone, Google's "Barcode Scanner" application will scan an Aztec code after a longer delay than a QR code, and the user has to manually enable Aztec code scanning in the application preferences.
Similarly the free barcode generator package "zint" will produce Aztec codes, but has a handful of bugs, and does not make full use of the codec to optimize their size as small as possible. Its generation of QR codes, on the other hand, is bulletproof.