Postgres performance issue - Mailing list pgsql-general

Hi Everyone,

I am running Postgres 7.1 and php 4.0.
I have a question:  Why does postmaster use 80% of the CPU on a simple sql
query?  I have a form that displays a list of customers based on a criteria
they enter.  If the user doesn't enter in a criteria it will display all the
customer in the database.  Basically the sql stmt is

select * from customer where upper(name) like  upper('$criteria%')

Does anyone know what the limitation on Postgres? Like how many records
before it starts to seize and choke on the performance side?


Thanks

Linh