OK, thanks for another thorough reply!

Are you saying though, that once set up, the user will see the open-
case data in the combo, but when certain letters are hit, it uses
the upper-case column for selection?
I'm getting a little confused, but will definately give it a try.

-Ryan

>
> Erm, normalisation is a great mechanism for getting a clean,

elegant

> database but there is no database theory book that rules that you

should

> eliminate redundancy at all cost, to the extent that you cannot

use your

> data! Theoretically you can normalise to 5N, but the general
> recommendation is to normalise to 4N (eliminate all redundancy)

and then

> wind back to "3N+" (sometimes called 3.5N) by applying commonsense

and

> knowledge of your implementation capability to your redundancy

rules.

>
> InterBase doesn't support case-insensitive indexes. The use of an
> automatically-populated (by BI and BU triggers) case-

insensitive "proxy"

> column (untouched by human hand) is a perfect example of where

common-sense

> should prevail over the religion of Redundancy and also where the
> server-side features of the database help you to achieve it

safely. As

> long as you never allow any user or external procedure to mess

around with

> your proxy column, the risk associated with data redundancy will

never arise.

>
> Index the proxy column. Remove the index on the "original"

column, unless

> you actually need case-sensitive ordering for something else.
>
> >and I also do
> >not want purely uppercase fields.
>
> Your user-accessible data for stuff that you want in open case

should stay

> as it is. Just don't let your users get access to the proxy

fields AT ALL

> - don't show them in the GUI.
>
> >The BDE lookup's can handle this, so I just thought I may have not
> >been doing something correctly.
>
> There's a great performance cost to forcing a case-insensitive

match on

> both sides of the comparison---this is the BDE way, which is only

efficient

> for desktop databases where the db structures are mapped directly

into

> local memory.
>
> You can do it "the BDE way" by applying the CASE INSENSITIVE

attribute

> without naming a proxy column, but why would you want to? IBO

supports the

> more efficient method that us old hands have always used for

InterBase (and

> other client/server DBs) with or without the BDE, for high

performance in

> case-insensitive searches.
>
> Helen