Slow form submission - 26k+ draft posts - function improvement request

Just a quick followup to note that I did what I recommended above to our copy of gravity forms and the result speaks for itself:

26K draft posts ( from gravity forms ).

Original processing time for form submissions: 26-28 seconds

New processing time for form submissions: 2-3 seconds

Here is the re-written code ( it could be done differently ) with my debug code and error handling taken out:

private static function get_default_post_title(){

	global $wpdb;

	# A default to use for the final title to return
	$final_title = 'Untitled_1';

	# Grab the most recent post that has Untitled_*
	$sql = "SELECT ID, post_title FROM {$wpdb->posts} WHERE post_title like 'Untitled\_%' ORDER BY post_date DESC LIMIT 0, 1";

	$results = $wpdb->get_results( $sql, ARRAY_A );
	if ( !is_null($results) ) {
		# found a match
		if ( is_array($results) ) {
			if ( count($results) > 0 ) {
				$match = array_pop($results);
				$found_title = $match['post_title'];
				$wanted_part = str_replace('Untitled_', '', $found_title);
				$wanted_part = (int)$wanted_part;
				if ( $wanted_part > 0 ) {
					# we successfully found the wanted Untitled entry
					$wanted_part += 1;
				} else {
					# non numeric Untitled_* - start with the post ID + 1 when doing checks
					$wanted_part = (int)$match['ID'] + 1;
				}
				# Update the default title
				$final_title = "Untitled_{$wanted_part}";

				# Set up our early break flag
				$done_with_loop = false;

				# Check for existence of the wanted part ( up to 100 times )
				# - still much faster than looping 26k times
				for ( $i = 0; $i < 100; $i++ ) {
					$sql = "SELECT 1 as <code>it_exists</code> FROM {$wpdb->posts} WHERE post_title = 'Untitled_{$wanted_part}'";

					$exists = $wpdb->get_results( $sql, ARRAY_A );
					if ( is_null($exists) ) {
						# no results returned
						if ( !empty( $wpdb->last_error ) ) {
							# Error with query
						} else {
							# simply not found
							$final_title = "Untitled_{$wanted_part}";
							$done_with_loop = true;
						}
					} else {
						if ( is_array($exists) && count($exists) > 0 ) {
							$test = array_pop($exists);
							if ( '1' == "{$test['it_exists']}" ) {
								# this exists - try the next item
								$wanted_part += 1;
							} else {
								# does not exist - good to go
								$final_title = "Untitled_{$wanted_part}";
								$done_with_loop = true;
							}
						} else {
							# no matches found
							$final_title = "Untitled_{$wanted_part}";
							$done_with_loop = true;
						}
					}
					if ( $done_with_loop ) {
						break;
					}
				}
			} else {
				# no match found for Untitled_* in the system
				# - should not happen - treat as an error
			}
		} else {
			# not an array
			# - should not happen - treat as error
		}
	} else {
		# no results at all likely an error
		if ( !empty($wpdb->last_error) ) {
			# database call error
		} else {
			# null result but no last error
		}
	}

	return $final_title;
}

Rewriting this function in the core code base would be greatly appreciated by those of us with much larger recordsets.

Thanks much!

Gravity forms works very nicely, but the cycling through all current posts with 26k records was getting to be a showstopper as it was causing submissions to take almost 30 seconds.