Hi Nadya,

Your first select is fully optimized, no need to rewrite it in any way.

>Hi everybody,
>
>In the Names table we have cl_Name C(25), cf_Name C(20), cM_Initial C(1) fields. If I want to search by last name and first name I can use:
>
>

>SET ANSI OFF
>select ... from ... where cl_name ="GREE" and cf_name = "MAR" and cM_Initial = ""

>
>or I can use

>lcName = padr("GREE",25,"_") + padr("MAR",20,"_")+padr("",1,"_")
>select ... from ... where cl_name + cf_name + cm_Initial LIKE lcName
>

>
>I currently put the following indexes in my local copy of Names table:
>
>cl_name
>cf_name
>cm_initial
>
>cl_name+cf_name+cm_initial
>
>Today I re-coded from the first approach to the second and it seems to me that I slowed down my searches considerably.
>
>I think, in either case we do not need to have an index on cm_Initial (it looks stupid to have an index on 1 char field).
>
>What do you think? I would appreciate your input.
>
>I've done the same with the Phone (we have separate fields for different phone parts). I haven't tested this change yet.
>
>Thanks in advance.