The umlaut's are gone while posting. So i will try to describe: The search expression is "search<lower umlaut a>o<lower umlaut o>u...". This is converted to "SEARCH<lower umlaut a>O<lower umlaut o>U" in the SELECT statement. The expected is "SEARCH<upper umlaut a>O<upper umlaut o>U". -- Herbert Metzdorf