adding a counter with number of views

Hi all,

I am relatively new to WP and apologise if this question is a silly one.

I am looking for a way to display the number of times a post or page is viewed – at the bottom of each post and page.

I was hoping there was a way to perform some sort of function on the database for the post being viewed ie: count(post_name_views) or something like that.

is this functionality available? or is my only option a plugin?

thank you.

John.