Log aging scheme - that was the word I was looking for (this was the "etc." free features in my previous post about logging to a database). One point more for the database side. Note that most database systems have monitoring tools that will alert you to conditions like database filling up. Also, usually a well-thought out aging/backup scheme is applied to databases used for real applications, so you get that for free, too.

Christian Lemburg
Brainbench MVP for Perl
http://www.brainbench.com