displaying # views on a page without hitting database all the time

Question

More and more sites are displaying the number of views (and clicks like on dzone.com) certain pages receive. What is the best practice for keeping track of view #'s without hitting the database every load?

I have a bunch of potential ideas on how to do this in my head but none of them seem viable.

Thanks, first time user.

Answer 1

I would try the database approach first - returning the value of an autoincrement counter should be a fairly cheap operation so you might be surprised. Even keeping a table of many items on which to record the hit count should be fairly performant.

But the question was how to avoid hitting the db every call. I'd suggest loading the table into the webapp and incrementing it there, only backing it up to the db periodically or on webapp shutdown.