>> Are you suggesting that I:
>> a. use a different datatype in plpgsql or
>> b. cast the values or
>> c. change the data type in the table
>
>Yes ;-). Presumably (b) would be the least painful route, but any of
>these would do the trick.
It turns out that the text and char(5) were not the problem - it was
an integer field that was passed into the function as a text (the
proximity field)! It now utilizes the index and has gone from taking
over 7 seconds to complete to .011 seconds!
I love postgres!
Thanks Tom!
-r