My suggestion, on our SQL Server 2000 installation it finds all primes less than 5000000 in 54 seconds. But of course it depends on the hardware...

set nocount on

go

select top 5000000 identity(int, 1, 1) as Number into #Numbers

from syscomments c1 cross join syscomments c2

go

alter table #Numbers add constraint PK_Numbers primary key clustered (Number)

go

create table #Primes(prime int primary key)

go

declare @time datetime

select @time = getdate()

declare @i int

set @i = 1

while @i*@i < 5000000

begin

 insert into #Primes

 select n.Number

 from #Numbers n

 where

 n.Number < (@i+1)*(@i+1) and n.Number > @i*@i

 and not exists

 (

  select * from #Primes p

  where p.prime < @i + 1 and n.Number % p.prime = 0

&nbsp

 set @i = @i + 1

end

--select * from #Primes

select datediff(ms, @time, getdate())

drop table #Primes

go

drop table #Numbers

go