Remotely monitoring server activity

I'm trying to manage the global freeradius status from a remote location. The files under /var/log/radius/radacct are pretty detailed and have a lot of information about what is going on with the freeradius server. However, searching the old mailing list archives, I see there's a particular thread of someone asking how to send the radacct logs to a remote syslog being not a recommended practice. What's a practical way of having this information for further analysis outside of the freeradius server? Send it to an SQL database somehow perhaps? Also, about the logs sent to syslog (for further forwarding to a remote syslog server) - is there a way to customize what's being sent on those messages? Thanks.