Postgresql and programming

Hello all,

as usual in CS, there can be many ways to do the same thing.
For instance, I can uppercase a string in a function in POstgreSQL or I can
uppercase it before sending the query to the database. I am reading Bruce
Monjian's book right now (page 204, Functions & triggers/triggers), and I am
wondering in terms of performance and speed what way is prefered (option A
or B).

In terms of performance also, is it preferable to desing a database as:

create table articles (
            refarticle text,
            title text,
            authorID integer,
            authorname text,
            editorID integer,
            editorname text,
            ... etc...
                );

OR :

create articles(
            refarticle text,
            title text,
            authorID integer,
            editorID integer,
            ... etc...
                );

create table authors(
                           authorname text,
                            authorID integer,
                            ...etc...
                            );

create table editors(
                editorID integer,
                editorname text,
                ...etc...
                    );

as the critical fields that searches will primarily be based on are obvious
here.

TIA.

T.J.

(P.S. some of you might remember design B from biblio.mdb :-) . )