Case Insensitive searches

In the application that we are working on, all data searches must be case insensitive. 

 

Select * from test where column1 = 'a' and Select * from test where column1 = 'A' should always be the same and use the index if column1 is indexed.  In order to do this am I going to be required to use the lower() on all selects in order to make sure that they are case insensitive?  In some db's if you use a lower() or upr() it will always do a table scan instead of using a index