>>Does anyone know if you can index on a substring in SQL 2008?
>
>No. Also, are you talking about Full Text indexing or just indexing? In any case, you can only index on columns in SQL Server (but you can create persisted computed column with your function)
>
>See also Function based index in T-SQL

Indexing. I saw the computed column solution in a google search and I may go that route.