I want to disable dupplicate customer names in a database regardless to
case.

I tried

CREATE TABLE customer ( id SERIAL, name CHARACTER(70));

ALTER TABLE customer
   ADD constraint customer_name_unique UNIQUE (UPPER(name));

but this is not allowed in Postgres

As Csaba suggested, a unique functional index does the trick - here's how I do it in something I'm working on right now:

CREATE UNIQUE INDEX gazPlaceNames_lower_PlaceName2_Index on gazPlaceNames (lower(placeName));

You could use upper() similarly - lower() is better for Unicode data, like mine. Now, If I try to add an alternate casing for an existing name, I get slapped:

> select * from gazPlaceNames where lower(placeName) like lower('New York');
 placenameid | placename | lang | script
-------------+-----------+------+--------
      291642 | New York  |      |
(1 row)

> insert into gazPlaceNames  (placename) values ('NeW yOrK');
ERROR: duplicate key violates unique constraint "gazplacenames_lower_placename2_"

As a bonus, Postgres will use the index for selects involving lower(placename), like the one above.

- John Burger
  MITRE




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