Without a doubt, Mike's query is far more efficient if you are looking for entries that begin with an upper case character - even more so if there is an index on the column!<br>
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So it looks like the list of options is:<br>
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Mike's query if you are only interested in the first character.<br>
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My first query if you are interested in every character being upper case.<br>
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Replace UPPER with INITCAP if you want just the first character in upper case and everything else in lower case.<br>
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Replace UPPER with LOWER if you waant to find entries where all characters are lower case.<br>
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Mike's approach will make use of any available indexes. Using UPPER, LOWER, or INITCAP will result in a full table scan.