> 1. Any idea why, not in this specific case, but is this standard ?
not standard, just convient i guess.

> 2. Would this not be wastefull as opposed to just indexing the department

consider names lname, fname ; i would like to see names in a database
to be Upper for te first char and lower for the rest; the way it is
written
on a letter for example.

Querying this may not always come back with the results wanted;
(typos no upper first char etc) therefor i would use a func index
toupper to find
them all regardless of the case.


Superboer.