CASE SENSITIVITY AND INDICES AND COLUMNS

I am running Oracle 7.3 on Windows NT 3.51, with "normally" 3.51 NT on the workstations. My Oracle code is written in Proc-C 2.1

we need to store file directory/file location information in a column in a table.

I want to be able to tell if a user input location is already in the table.

I anticipate many hundreds of rows in this table, eventually possibly thousands.

should I:

1. force all data added to the column to be upper case
2. use select * where UPPER(pathcolumnname) = somestring

If I use #1, then I worry that if something is remotely on some case sensitive file server (Unix maybe) that I won't be able to retrieve items later if I store them in upper case.

If I use #2 then I worry that the select might take too long because . won't this make any index I have on the column unusable?

Does anyone know what UPPER(column) does as far as the effect of an index on a select statement using that column?

Thanks,

Jeff Kish
from a place with no DBA
I'm just a programmer (C++) ; - )

ait_at_concentric.net Received on Thu May 29 1997 - 00:00:00 CDT