HELP ME WITH DELPHI prgz..., plz!

Hi there, programmerz...
Well..., I got some questionz and I would appreciate
if someone of ya  help me out with it...

1) I have some string , for example "Alex" , and I need to extract first letter from it , here it is "A",
so any ideaz how to do it? I searched a Help File , but did not find anything... ;(

2) I am building a database and have several fields : "Name" , "Age" , "City" and I need for example to search and print to screen all people who are from Moscow City ... so any ideas ? i know that we can do it with SQL ... , but if there is another method how to do it? and btw how to do it in SQL ?

Thanx in advance... I am apprecaiting your help...

With best wishes,
Alex.