Hello Nerissa,
MM does not have such a method in its buisiness objects, but it should be quite easy to implement one, not forgetting the optimisation probs that Mike mentioned.
In MM normally you try to solve things like this with a parametrised view, but I agree with you that this doesn't make sense in all cases. We already had this discussion a few week ago it started with message #
645646.
The search idea got lost to the end , while a filter option might be in next fwk version. Perhaps you just have a look at the thread.
Marcus