>Then how do you do effective alpha searches so that things appear in the correct order. For example if you have the following names in the database
>
>McGinty
>Miller
>MASON (by accident this is all upper case)

Todd,
That's not a problem if you use views. Let the collating sequence to MACHINE and have your view retrieve the desired records.

Then index the view, using another collating sequence, and you'll have the best of both worlds.

José