Lists of Names

I'm curious: what are the best ways to handle lists of names in an Informix environment such that a user can enter a name and get a reasonable list of names from which to choose. In my current environment, which uses ISAM files, we have a large number of names, many of which are the same as others and are not in fact the same person. Currently, we allow the user to enter as much of the name as they choose to enter, then provide an onscreen alphabetical list such that the (partial) name entered would appear in the middle of the names on the screen. The user can scroll forward in the list or backward in the list, to the ends of the file if they so chose. To implement this, we have two files: one indexes the names in ascending alphabetical order, and the other indexes the names in descending alphabetical order. I would guess that we do not want to try to duplicate this exactly as we move to Informix. The "forward" select and the "backward" select might each select hundreds of thousands of records - since I'm currently in a development environment and don't have the database loaded with that many records and can't test it, I'm guessing that response time in an online program using that strategy would be unacceptable. I look forward to and appreciate your responses. Thanks, M. Livenspargar