Thanks for the pointer. Let's get into some Z stuff. How does one do the following? Instead of the string '(918)' we need to select for a list of areacodes. i.e. (918), (404), (950).

something like ... select name, phone from contact where phone LIKE '(918)%' OR phone LIKE '(404)%'.... should be built using DTML??? but how?

Well, if it were me, I'd munge the data and get the areacode into its own field and do MUCH more efficient SQL = operators... Alternatively, assuming you had a form variable called areacodes:list <UNTESTED ZSQL Method CODE> SELECT stuff FROM contact <!--#sqlgroup where optional--> <!--#in areacodes--> phone LIKE '(<!--#var sequence-item-->)%' <!--unless sequence-end--> OR <!--#/unless--> <!--#/in--> <!--#/sqlgroup--> If the user doesn't select any areacodes the sqlgroup (with the optional tag) will render: SELECT stuff FROM contact If there are one or more areacodes in the list it will render something like: SELECT stuff FROM contact where phone LIKE '(540)%' OR phone LIKE '(703)%' OR phone LIKE '(813)%' or at least it looks like it should! :^) I think this would be REALLY slow. --Rob