Comment

djo March 11, 2006

Try

CREATE INDEX u_first_name_index ON u (lower(first_name));

or a variation thereof.

(Ah, I just noticed you wrote "without any indices". You probably already know this, then. I'll post it anyway - for the search engines.)

You could also use a shadow column maintained by a trigger, but that's an evil solution, only to be used in almost never-met circumstances.