Need to sort and group tableviews using SQLite on iPhone

Question

I have two different tableviews, one needs to be grouped by region, one needs to be listed alphabetically. I am using an SQLite database. The grouped tableview needs to be grouped by a column in the database called Region. The alphabetic view uses a column of data called hotSpgsName. Someone told me to use a NSDictionary, but I would like to know if I can access my SQLite directly. I am fairly new to programming, so any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks Jaime