Monitor Usage Statistic-- How it is done?

Question

Windows, Firefox or Google Chrome all monitor usage statistics and analyze the crash reports are sent to them. I am thinking of implementing the same feature into my application.

Of course it's easy to litter an application with a lot of logging statement, but this is the approach that I want to avoid because I don't want my code to have too many cross cutting concern in a function. I am thinking about using AOP to do it, but before that I want to know how other people implement this feature first.

Anyone has any suggestion?

Clarification: I am working on desktop application, and doesn't involve any RDBMS

Answer 1

Joel had a blog article about something like this - his app(s) trap crashes and then contact his server with some set of details. I think he checks for duplicates and throws them out. It is a great system and I was impressed when I read it.

http://www.fogcreek.com/FogBugz/docs/30/UsingFogBUGZtoGetCrashRep.html

We did this at a place I was at that had a public server set up to receive data. I am not a db guy and have no servers I control on the public internets. My personal projects unfortunately do not have this great feature yet.