>The program I used to use displays many records in a grid format...ie I could type in a Mfg Name and get a list of all equipment by that Mfg.

OIC. The fuzzy search is based on the finding the first record that either evaluates as matching the value input or finding the first record that evaluates as being greater than. In this case, an SQL statement, with the proper indexes, is probably going to be not only the most efficient, but the easiest to maintain as well.