Dan,

SQL Server allows to create indexes on columns only. There're a couple ways to acomplish what you want. If expression for such column is simple enough (one-liner), than you can use computed column with index on it. Otherwise you can add extra indexed column to a table and update it in a trigger. In case if you cannot add a column to the table, you can create supplementary table with such field and related to your table by the key field.

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>I would like to allow the search on a certain field to be performed excluding spaces and non-alpha-numeric characters. In other words, a search on IBM, I.B.M., I B M or I-B-M would all match to any of the others. In VFP I'd just index and search with CHRTRAN(). What's the best way to go about this in SQL Server?