SQL gurus: what is the fastest way to do a select and update

[mihai11]

Originally Posted by consolegaming

Wouldn't it just be something like:

UPDATE story SET story_status=2
WHERE thread_id IN (1,2,3)

where 1,2,3 are the various values you're looking for. If not then I think you probably need to explain why you need to use a sub query to be honest.

This is almost what I need except that the numbers from the "IN" clause must be retrieved from the same table (using another select).

Business logic: I am working on a digg-like clone that integrates well in VB. At this point I need to develop a bot (that will be run on the server at certain intervals) that will promote stories once certain conditions are met. In order to achieve this, my bot would need to scan the stories table then update all the stories that satisfy the given criterias.

I don't want to give more details about how the system is working because that would allow users to cheat my system


Regards,
Razvan