For example, in this case, the 'views' count is clearly incrementing properly during the session but the mysqli object is not maintained and cannot be reused during the session (if the page is refreshed or whatever). Can the _SESSION global only hold simple types? What else could be limiting this? EDIT: my hope here is to improve performance. So if there is another way to achieve this, I'd be happy to know.For example, in this case, the 'views' count is