keeping Track of most recently viewed products

whats the best way of keeping track of the most recently viewed products

[topr8]

this site running off an access databse not sqlserver.

there is a requirement to show the most recently viewed products (3)

what would be the best way to do this?

holding the info in cookies, or tracking the customer with db entries for each page visited and pulling the most recent from the db, but filtering out matching entries. - this would be handy as it could double up as a way of analysing visitor movement, but i'm worried about bloating the access db.

am thinking that the db solution would be marginally quicker than using cookies

[gangstah]

I think I would probably go with the DB route also. I guess that all depends on how much strain the db is already under from page hits and record requests.

[smokin]

IMO you should limit the number of connections made to an access db, so I would use cookies

[topr8]

thanks ... more unsure now!

[smokin]

sorry didn't mean to confuse you, just offering you my opinion ;o)

[gangstah]

The more I think about, the more I think smokin is right. Access is so bad for Web databases, the fewer hits the better. Go with the cookie.

[aspdaddy]

Are we talking about dynamic breadcrumbs?

This keeps track of the last 3 pages.

sub add_to_recent()
session("page3")= session("page2")
session("page2")= session("page1")
session("page1") = request.ServerVariables("URL")
end sub

[cococure]

I would use aspdaddy's subroutine and augment it with code to get rid of duplicates as well.

[TheDave]

Nice idea actually :) A thought I had was if the product id is stored in a querystring, you could just use a "productX" cookie and set it to the product id, rather than the URL. That way you can request the cookie and grab the product straight from the db. :)

Access is evil but I still use it :P