By far the quickest and easiest way to print "all the prime numbers (1-100)" is to fully embrace the fact that prime numbers are a known, finite, and unchanging set of values ("known" and "finite" within a particular range, of course). At this small of a scale, why waste CPU each time to calculate a bunch of values that have been known for a very long time, and take up hardly any memory to store?
SELECT tmp.[Prime]
FROM (VALUES (2), (3), (5), (7), (11), (13),
(17), (19), (23), (29), (31), (37), (41),
(43), (47), (53), (59), (61), (67), (71),
(73), (79), (83), (89), (97)) tmp(Prime)
Of course, if you do need to calculate the prime numbers between 1 and 100, the following is fairly efficient:
;WITH base AS
(
SELECT tmp.dummy, ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY (SELECT 1)) AS [num]
FROM (VALUES (0), (0), (0), (0), (0), (0), (0)) tmp(dummy)
), nums AS
(
SELECT (ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY (SELECT 1)) * 2) + 1 AS [num]
FROM base b1
CROSS JOIN base b2
), divs AS
(
SELECT [num]
FROM base b3
WHERE b3.[num] > 4
AND b3.[num] % 2 <> 0
AND b3.[num] % 3 <> 0
)
SELECT given.[num] AS [Prime]
FROM (VALUES (2), (3)) given(num)
UNION ALL
SELECT n.[num] AS [Prime]
FROM nums n
WHERE n.[num] % 3 <> 0
AND NOT EXISTS (SELECT *
FROM divs d
WHERE d.[num] <> n.[num]
AND n.[num] % d.[num] = 0
);
This query only tests odd numbers as even numbers won't be prime anyway. It is also specific to the range of 1 - 100.
Now, if you need a dynamic range (similar to what is shown in the example code in the question), then the following is an adaptation of the query above that is still rather efficient (it calculated the range of 1 - 100,000 -- 9592 entries -- in just under 1 second):
DECLARE @RangeStart INT = 1,
@RangeEnd INT = 100000;
DECLARE @HowMany INT = CEILING((@RangeEnd - @RangeStart + 1) / 2.0);
;WITH frst AS
(
SELECT tmp.thing1
FROM (VALUES (0), (0), (0), (0), (0), (0), (0), (0), (0), (0)) tmp(thing1)
), scnd AS
(
SELECT 0 AS [thing2]
FROM frst t1
CROSS JOIN frst t2
CROSS JOIN frst t3
), base AS
(
SELECT TOP( CONVERT( INT, CEILING(SQRT(@RangeEnd)) ) )
ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY (SELECT 1)) AS [num]
FROM scnd s1
CROSS JOIN scnd s2
), nums AS
(
SELECT TOP (@HowMany)
(ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY (SELECT 1)) * 2) +
(@RangeStart - 1 - (@RangeStart%2)) AS [num]
FROM base b1
CROSS JOIN base b2
), divs AS
(
SELECT [num]
FROM base b3
WHERE b3.[num] > 4
AND b3.[num] % 2 <> 0
AND b3.[num] % 3 <> 0
)
SELECT given.[num] AS [Prime]
FROM (VALUES (2), (3)) given(num)
WHERE given.[num] >= @RangeStart
UNION ALL
SELECT n.[num] AS [Prime]
FROM nums n
WHERE n.[num] BETWEEN 5 AND @RangeEnd
AND n.[num] % 3 <> 0
AND NOT EXISTS (SELECT *
FROM divs d
WHERE d.[num] <> n.[num]
AND n.[num] % d.[num] = 0
);
My testing (using SET STATISTICS TIME, IO ON;
) shows that this query performs better than the other two answers given (so far):
RANGE: 1 - 100
Query Logical Reads CPU Milliseconds Elapsed Milliseconds
------- ---------------- ---------------- -----------------
Solomon 0 0 0
Dan 396 0 0
Martin 394 0 1
RANGE: 1 - 10,000
Query Logical Reads CPU Milliseconds Elapsed Milliseconds
------- ---------------- ---------------- -----------------
Solomon 0 47 170
Dan 77015 2547 2559
Martin n/a
RANGE: 1 - 100,000
Query Logical Reads CPU Milliseconds Elapsed Milliseconds
------- ---------------- ---------------- -----------------
Solomon 0 984 996
Dan 3,365,469 195,766 196,650
Martin n/a
RANGE: 99,900 - 100,000
NOTE: In order to run this test I had to fix a bug in Dan's code -- @startnum
was not factored into the query so it always started at 1
. I replaced the Dividend.num <= @endnum
line with Dividend.num BETWEEN @startnum AND @endnum
.
Query Logical Reads CPU Milliseconds Elapsed Milliseconds
------- ---------------- ---------------- -----------------
Solomon 0 0 1
Dan 0 157 158
Martin n/a
RANGE: 1 - 100,000 (partial re-test)
After fixing Dan's query for the 99,900 - 100,000 test, I noticed that there were no more logical reads listed. So I retested this range with that fix still applied and found that the logical reads were again gone and the times were slightly better (and yes, the same number of rows were returned).
Query Logical Reads CPU Milliseconds Elapsed Milliseconds
------- ---------------- ---------------- -----------------
Dan 0 179,594 180,096