So I'm not sure what would be the best way to go about this in terms of best practices and optimization.
Scenario:
I have query that parses an external XML feed and stores the data using the transient API every 24 hours. This is stored in wp_options and the whole feed is stored in the option_value, one of the numerical values in the feed is for "weight". For example here is what the feed looks like for the this value.
<weight type="string"><![CDATA[120]]></weight>
The posts have a meta_box with a key called "meta_weight" with a numerical value.
The query compares these 2 values by grabbing the xml as an array and the meta value with something rather simple like: (I have simplified this example, it is working).
$xml_weight = $xml->weight;
$meta_weight = get_post_meta($post->ID, 'meta_weight', true);
if $xml_weight > $meta_weight { echo "Your heavy";}
Now for the actual question:)
This value comparison is just done on the fly with php, I need to store it in the database using just false/true to tally all posts where this value is true.
Should I just add this value incrementally using $wpdb class and insert it into wp_postmeta.
Or is there some better method to just grab the value out of the DB and compare it to the meta box value for every post?
My sql knowledge is very poor.