In a Java application, accessing a FireBird database how it is possible to ignore both case distinction and accents both
in Java and FireBird. That is, if the user enter in the Java application a string like 'acao', he can find 'ação'. He enters
'ácido' and he can find 'ACIDO'.

If the problem is only to get rid of case sensitivity, something like

String sql = "select code, description from table where upper(description) = ?";
PreparedStatement stmt = con.prepareStatement(sql);
stmt.setString(1, user_input.toUpperCase());

works. This way, both Java and FireBird are ready to ignore case distinctions (obviously provided that the column
'description' has been defined with a sensible character set and collation order, like ISO8859_1 and PT_PT).
But I cannot figure how to do it to consider only primary differences (a and b) but not secondary (a and A) and
tertiary (a and ã).

This has nothing to do with FireBird-java? With the JDBC driver specifically not. But where would I find more FireBird-
interested Java programmers in a single place? How does FireBird-Java driver supports this? Sorry if you find
my question a distraction amid the main stream of this mailing list.

Thanks for any hint.

Adriano R. Ferreira