Lately SAP note 2001392 has been released that allow printing of Datamatrix for some device types. There are also fonts and other 3rd party tools that allows you to print a datamatrix.

However most of these solutions have some specific requirements, as a workaround to this I created a proof of concept that allows for printing a datamatrix with minimal requriements.

The solution uses 2 tricks:

• Hardcore programming
• http://wiki.scn.sap.com/wiki/display/Snippets/Dynamic+Background+Colors+in+SmartForms

Only 10×10 datamatrices have been implemented, allowing it to contain up to 3 characters.

The code can be downloaded from https://github.com/larshp/Datamatrix

To test, run the report

and it will show the smartform as print preview

The smartform consists of a 10×10 template where the background colour of each cell is changed from ABAP,

This technique can be extended to QR, aztec and other 2d barcode symbologies.

Note: Do not regard this as best practice, however in some situations it might be beneficial to use this approach.