Let's stick to your example: res.partner view

The search view has this field:

<field name="name" filter_domain="['|','|',('name','ilike',self),('parent_id','ilike',self),('ref','=',self)]"></field>

Let's focus on the first search tuple: ('name','ilike',self)

That filters all partners, that has the entered search name as part of the their name. (Note that ilike operator is case-insensitive (ilike is postgresql specific), while like is case-sensitive). SQL: name ILIKE '%self%'

What you want to perform is the query: name ILIKE 'self%'.

The like and ilike operators in OpenERP automatically add the wildcards arround the search term. To avoid that, you should use =like and =ilike operators. You then need to add the wildcard manually (otherwise it will search for the exact term), so I would guess you should change the search tuple to:

(name,'=ilike',self+'%')

I'm not sure you can add strings this way, but give it a try. Also change the other search tuples accordingly.

EDIT (since the reactions on this answer are wrongly brisk):

I've tested the mentioned search domain (name,'=ilike',self+'%') and it doesn't work.

What did work was (name,'=ilike',self) and searching for 'te%'. But that's not very userfriendly.

So the derived question from the OPs question is: How to automatically add the wildcard to the search term?

Best regards.