title: ASP.NET - Storing Article View Count in Database
body: <p>I am building a Wiki / Blog similar application, and I have a question about the best way to store the View Count for each of the articles.  The requirement is that I only want to store the unique number of users that viewed the article and not the total view count.  So far I have come up with 3 different ways to accomplish:</p>
  
  <p><strong>1. SQL Server stored procedure:</strong> the problem with this approach is that the data is stored in XML data type and it might be a bit complicated to achieve the requirement using this method. I am leaving this as a last resort.</p>
  
  <p><strong>2. MSMQ:</strong> this would work great, since I can process the requests serially. The only problem with this approach is that, I cannot ensure that MSMQ is installed on the host server. This one is out of the question!</p>
  
  <p><strong>3. Using <code>Application.Lock()</code>:</strong> I know that using this method I can lock access to the <code>Application</code> object, update some entry in the application, update the database, and then call <code>Application.Unlock()</code>. While this sounds as a functional approach, it still feels like a workaround.</p>
  
  <p>Does anyone has a suggestion on what I should do to achieve the requirement?</p>