Hi,

we've got the same Problem in a similar context and found a workaround: just encode the '{' with CHR(123) (on Oracle) or CHAR(123) (on mySQL).

For Oracle we would modify your query as follow:

select count(distinct v.id) from some_table v left join other_table p on v.id = p.foreign_id where upper(v.last_name) like upper('{%');

==>

select count(distinct v.id) from some_table v left join other_table p on v.id = p.foreign_id where upper(v.last_name) like upper( CHR(123) || '%');

voila

Best regards,
Peter