Version: IDS 10

I am currently looking at various fragmentation strategies for Indexes
that have keys of type CHAR. I have following questions:

1. Columns that have value of "000987" but is a CHAR, which strategy
makes more sense, doing the fragmentation by using SUBSTR or using MOD
of HASH. Is there any such HASH function in IDS that could be used for
such scenarios. Is there any other fragmentation strategy that is
better than above.

2. Column that are CHAR and are typically string, what would be a
better fragmentation strategy. What options do I have other than
SUBSTR.

3. Is substr efficient ? Does it slow down building indexes