>how to search for records containing the search string?
>
>say, my user entered "ELL", i want to be able to search into my table all records that contains the word "ELL" like "HELLO", "BELL", "SELLER"
>
>

select * from where like="%ELL%"

>
>can i do this using locate? i want to search in the same table, not to put the result in a table or a cursor.
>
>any help pls?

locate for atc('ELL',myField) > 0
locate for like('*ELL*',upper(myField))

etc. But such a search is slow.
PS: Your SQL version has a typo.
select * from where myField like "%ELL%"
If it's already upper cased as your SQL version proposes you might drop upper().
Cetin