Case-insensitive search using Hibernate

For the simple case you describe, look at Restrictions.ilike(), which does a case-insensitive search.

Criteria crit = session.createCriteria(Person.class);
crit.add(Restrictions.ilike('town', '%fran%');
List results = crit.list();

Criteria crit = session.createCriteria(Person.class);
crit.add(Restrictions.ilike('town', 'fran', MatchMode.ANYWHERE);
List results = crit.list();

If you use Spring's HibernateTemplate to interact with Hibernate, here is how you would do a case insensitive search on a user's email address:

getHibernateTemplate().find("from User where upper(email)=?", emailAddr.toUpperCase());

You also do not have to put in the '%' wildcards. You can pass MatchMode (docs for previous releases here) in to tell the search how to behave. START, ANYWHERE, EXACT, and END matches are the options.