Is there a way to optimize a select when looking for substrings ($) of a character field. A table (500,000+ records) on a LAN with an index on UPPER(ALLTRIM(somefield)) is acceptably fast when we do this...

SELECT * FROM sometable WHERE ;
UPPER(ALLTRIM(somefield)) = UPPER(ALLTRIM(variable))

... but if we ...

SELECT * FROM sometable WHERE ;
UPPER(ALLTRIM(variable)) $ UPPER(ALLTRIM(somefield))

... it is horribly slow. Any suggestions on how to speed that up?

Thank you.