Brian,

> I understand the advantage of having a proxy column
> of UPPER case strings for searching, but it is hardly
> justified for short list of a dozen or so rows.

In small tables I setup the uppercase duplicate column as
COMPUTED BY( UPPER(Base_Field) );

This allows me to change my mind later and setup a real duplicate
column with its own index (if the table grows unexpectedly) - and not
have to change the application.

FWIW

Geoff Worboys
Telesis Computing