Are Oracle Varchar2 columns always case-sensitive?

Is there any way of switching off the case-sensitiveness of the data held in VARCHAR2 columns? Fro example SQLServer7 seems to have case-sensitiveness as an install option.

i.e. I want a query such as:

SELECT * FROM EMPLOYEES
WHERE NAME = 'FrEd'

and have it return an employee whose name is 'Fred'.

I realise I could do:

SELECT * FROM EMPLOYEES
WHERE UPPER(NAME) = UPPER('FrEd')

but does this impose any performance hit?

Thanks in advance,

Craig Received on Wed Jan 26 2000 - 11:42:08 CST