SQL ignore case in group by? (oracle)

Question

Can you ignore case in a group by? For example if there is a table of states but it has records with "Alabama" and "alabama", or "Alaska" and "alaska" and you want the group by that column but just get back a single 'group' for Alabama and Alaska.

thanks

Answer 1

Just use UPPER:

select upper(state), count(1)
  from your_table
 group by upper(state);