Use count or have a field that tallies?

Fairly simple concept, making an extremely basic message board system and I want users to have a post count. Now I was debating on whether or not to have a tally in their row that is added each time a post by them is created, or subtracted by one each time a post of theirs is deleted. However I'm sure that performing a count query when the post count is requested would be more accurate due to unforseen circumstances (say a thread gets deleted and it d开发者_StackOverflowoesn't lower their tally properly), however this seems like it would be less efficient to run a query EVERY time their post count is loaded, especially in the case of them having 10 posts on the same page and it lists their post count each post.

Thoughts/Advice?

Thanks

post_count should definitely be a column in the user table. the little extra effort to get this right is minimal compared to the additional database load you produce with running a few count query on every thread view.

if you use some sort of orm or database abstraction, it should be quite simple to add the counting to their create / delete filters.

Just go for count each time. Unless your load is going to be astronomical, COUNT shouldn't be a problem, and reduces the amount of effort involved in saving and updating data.

Just make sure you put an index on your user_id column, so that you can filter the data with a WHERE clause efficiently.

If you get to the point where this doesn't do it for you, you can implement caching strategies, but given that it's a simple message board, you shouldn't encounter that problem for a while.

EDIT:

Just saw your second concern about the same query repeating 10 times on a page. Don't do that :) Just pull the data once and store it in a variable. No need to repeat the same query multiple times.

Just use COUNT. It will be more accurate and will avoid any possible missed cases.

The case you mention of displaying the post count multiple times on a page won't be a problem unless you have an extremely high traffic site.

In any other case, the query cache of your database server will execute the query, then keep a cache of the response until any of the tables that the query relies on change. In the course of a single page load, nothing else should change, so you will only be executing the query once.

If you really need to worry about it, you can just cache it yourself in a variable and just execute the query once.

Generally speaking, your database queries will always be extremely efficient compared to your app logic. As such, the time wasted on maintaining the post_count in the user table will most probably be far far less than is needed to run a query to update the user table whenever a comment is posted.

Also, it is usually considered bad DB structure to have a field such as you are describing.

There are arguments for both, so ultimately it depends on the volume of traffic you expect. If your code is solid and properly layered, you can confidently keep a row count in your users' record without worrying about losing accuracy, and over time, count() will potentially get heavy, but updating a row count also adds overhead.

For a small site, it makes next to no difference, so if (and only if) you're a stickler for efficiency, the only way to get a useful answer is to run some benchmarks and find out for yourself. One way or another, it's going to be 3/10ths of 2/8ths of diddley squat, so do whatever feels right :)

It's totally reasonable to store the post counts in a column in your Users table. Then, to ensure that your post counts don't become increasingly inaccurate over time, run a scheduled task (e.g. nightly) to update them based on your Posts table.