Also, the newest syslog RFC (http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5424 http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5424) allows for structured data to be included with the message.

Also, the newest syslog RFC (http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5424 http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5424) allows for structured data to be included with the message. The nice thing about this approach is that you can serialize the received messages however you'd like: JSON, XML, TSV, whatever. Support for RFC 5424 in syslog daemons and logging libraries is thin, but will hopefully improve soon.