Jay, That did help. Turns out all i needed was to use LIKE.

to answer your question ... I'm only storing addresses as strings. I needed to go and find key words in the address and based on this assign the row a 'region' identifier. 'LIKE %keyword%' worked exactly as i needed. for my simplictic projects this seems to work right now. the other stuff you're talking about i've heard and seen mentioned, but haven't really gotten into. still just feeling my way around this area. hopefully i'll grow into more advanced and efficient structures as i use it and learn more. but for now, just trying to get along. thanks.