Theo, > Does anyone have any better suggestions???
Well, one suggestion would be to take a machete to your application. Putting key references and text data in the same column? Sheesh. If that's not an option, in addition to the approach you've taken, you could also do a partial index on the appropriate numeric values: CREATE INDEX idx_content_numeric ON botched_table(content) WHERE content ~ '^[0-9]{1,9}$'; However, this approach may be more/less effective that the segregation approach you've already taken. -- Josh Berkus Aglio Database Solutions San Francisco ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 2: you can get off all lists at once with the unregister command (send "unregister YourEmailAddressHere" to [EMAIL PROTECTED])