In version 1.x I was able to run the search widget with UPPER as part of my expression (Oracle SDE all caps search)
<expression>PAR_OWN LIKE UPPER'%[value]%'</expression>
However, this statement does not return any results in 2.x. If I use the expression w/o UPPER and type my search string in all caps I get results.
<expression>PAR_OWN LIKE '%[value]%'</expression