A LIKE predicate in which a column is compared to a character string that begins with a character constant (not a wildcard) is transformed
into three predicates: one predicate that uses the LIKE operator, one that
uses the >= operator, and one that uses the < operator. For example:
country LIKE 'Ch%i%'
becomes
country LIKE 'Ch%i%'
AND country >= 'Ch'
AND country < 'Ci'
The first (LIKE) predicate is not optimizable, but the new predicates added
by the transformation are.
When the character string begins with one more character constants and
ends with a single "%", the first LIKE clause is eliminated. For example: