Need Recommendation on impression tracking

I'm doing a research for my work which needs to track impression of a little web app sitting in 3rd party (authorized) websites. I need to analyze the impression close to real time.

I 开发者_Go百科know there are at least two ways

1) use image, and parse the server log for reporting.

2) js sends ajax, and save the request in DB. (either mysql or mongo or other noSQL).

so, which way is the faster way and can handle tones of traffic?

I suspect that server log is slower because it has to append to a file. But I'm not sure if it is really slower, or it is not.

So, what is the pros and cons of each approach? Thanks. :)

• P.S. I can't use Google Analytics because there is a limit on Data Export..and also other limitations. :-)

Both options are valid, the image and server logs are simple and work as long as the visitor loads images. This is faster in most cases, since there is no extra processing.

If using JavaScript, I would do what the web-analytics companies do and create a image call with JS and at the other end have either a image file with server logs or a script reading data in to a DB and returning a 1x1 pixel transparent GIF.

If all you need is impressions, I would go with the simpler solution, less to go wrong.