Another Logging Question

I'd like for my counter/logger to be fairly scalable, so I'm toying with two possible implementation routes: 1. Have the counter dump visitor info to a text file, then run a cron job on that nightly to process the data and perform a full analysis. 2. Have the counter dump the visitor info into a DB (probably MySQL), then process the data whenever the administrator wants to view his stats. Anyone have any suggestions or considerations on which method would work better? Is there something else I should do instead? Thanks for any input, ---Matt