SQL Challenge vs. Progress 4GL

One of the newsletters I subscribe to is the SQLCentral solutions. A couple of weeks ago they issued the Summer SQL Stumpers 2009, asking for the fastest way to calculate all the primes 1000 or lower. The fastest solution they came up with runs in about 7 seconds, which I thought was terribly slow for the algorithm used (Sieve of Atkins and Aristophanes), and I thought I’d give Progress a try. I came up with the following:

DEFINE TEMP-TABLE ttPrime
FIELD prime AS INTEGER
INDEX prime prime.
DEFINE VARIABLE i AS INTEGER     NO-UNDO.
DEFINE VARIABLE test-val AS INTEGER     NO-UNDO.

ETIME(TRUE).

DO i = 1 TO 1000:
  CREATE ttPrime.
  ASSIGN
    ttPrime.prime = i.
END.

DO i = 2 TO 499:
  ASSIGN test-val = i * 2.
  REPEAT WHILE test-val < = 1000:
    FOR FIRST ttPrime
      WHERE ttPrime.prime = test-val
      EXCLUSIVE-LOCK:
      DELETE ttPrime.
    END.
    ASSIGN test-val = test-val + i.
  END.
END.

MESSAGE "Etime" ETIME
  VIEW-AS ALERT-BOX INFO.

FOR EACH ttPrime
  NO-LOCK:
  DISPLAY ttPrime.
END.

On my machine the procedure runs in about 93 milliseconds, and as far as I can see the results are accurate. Progress 4GL FTW!