I often perform complex searches in Calc and therefore I would welcome a
powerful, yet simple search strategy.

I worked recently on a worksheet with 75 columns (A-BW) and some 500 rows. Every
row contained data that pointed to a second worksheet totalling over 5000 rows.
This might seem a huge worksheet, but it is actually the norm for serious work.

Most of the time, however, I do need only a portion of this data. The default
method to retrieve this specific data using Calc is to sort the data depending
on the first variable of interest, select the proper rows and copy them to a
second worksheet; sort again for the second variable of interest and so on. (The
filter does not offer substantial advantages.)

This method is unfortunately very laborious and when having to sort for more
than 3 variables (or perform more than 3-5 searches), it becomes very
impractical and I usually decide to create a mySQL database and perform the
searches in the database. This is highly time-consuming, too, as I need to
create a DB first and than reimport the data back into Calc.

What I really miss is a simple SQL SELECT statement within Calc, something like:

SELECT 'which columns/rows – range'
  FROM 'worksheet'.'which columns/rows – range'
  WHERE 'some conditions'
  INSERT INTO NEW 'new worksheet name'
(we could implement later additional options like ORDER BY, DISTINCT and so on)

This SELECT statement needs not to be of DB-grade, i.e. it isn't necessary to
optimize it “ad extremum” (for huge speed/ extreme DB sizes). It needs only to
perform a more complex search AND export the search results into a new worksheet
(we could later devise options to export the data into an existing worksheet,
but this would be more complicated). It could be implemented even as a function
or a menu item. And it would greatly enhance the power of the Ooo-Calc
application and offer some standardization, too (as SQL is a standard).