i suggest to take a look on JasperReports. i think it's the best way to integrate reports, barcode and pdf generation into your rails app. as far as i know theres no satisfying way in rails.
http://jasperforge.org/ JasperReports / iReport (generate your reports with a GUI) http://jasperforge.org/sf/wiki/do/viewPage/projects.jasperreports/wiki/ Samples => barbecue sample for you
at least a starting point for the integration: http://wiki.rubyonrails.com/rails/pages/HowtoIntegrateJasperReports
i took me a while to use it. so good luck. 