Thanks. But in my case, I know that those optimizations would be valid. I would like to force the optimizer use that index. I had a quick look in the sources... As far as I get it all that needs to be done it to flag the custom "LIKE" function with "SQLITE\_FUNC\_LIKE". Am I right? By the way, the ICU extension also using "sqlite3_create_function(...)" to re-register "LIKE". Does that mean that ICO can not use indexes either?