logging

I'm currently planning the rule based custom logging module, which I'm going to write after rules 1.0 is out. I post this to the activity group too, because I think there is quite a overlap to 2.x version, which is currently under development.

Notifying users of new content, events, actions is something that is common to enterprise level applications, social network or simply a blog. Notification can happen in many forms and via many mediums, some of the prominent ones being e-mail, instant messaging, SMS or live feed. Solutions uptill now have been separate and distant to each other, even though the problem is essentially the same, that is some message needs to be relayed to one of your user. The medium and carrier would differ and so would be the urgency and priority of delivery.

I'm curious what people think about the pros and cons of turning on Database Logging in Drupal. In particular I want to know if you see a noticeable performance hit. My site could benefit from knowing who is hitting what, but I'm concerned about performance. Anyone have some experience with Database Logging on a production site.

Khalid Bahey is well on his way to getting a patch into Drupal 6 for spitting out logging of watchdog entries so that:
1. They can be routed to a different source other than the database, from a flat file to syslog support. The watchdog table can crush many sites.
2. Actions can be taken depending on the messages. Get notification via email, IM, pager, etc. depending on the severity levels of messages in your watchdog.

This will be a fantastic feature for Drupal 6....but really, we need it today for Drupal 5 as well. I've spoken with Khalid and he's willing to backport both the patch as well as the supporting modules. The plan of attack is: