At 09:43 PM 10/26/2004, robert_difalco wrote:

> >
>
>Well, I have a UDF to perform regex searches on this column, so I
>can't really split them up as I have no idea where the wildcards may
>be in the search pattern. It's just a very problematic field.

OK, that's easy. Create three (or N) other fields, populate them
with triggers that chop the main field into three (or N) pieces
and index the pieces. Your queries will be

select whole_field from table order by sub1, sub2, sub3


Regards,


Ann