What you say is true to a certain extent. However, this logger is for when you don't have access to regular log files. My dialup ISP actually lets me do CGI in my home directory but doesn't let me have access to log files.

And since my site gets about 4 or 5 visitors a day, the system hit is almost nil. If I were getting a visitor a minute, I might change it. Also as it is, it's only doing one lookup per page. That's a lot less than the standard number of lookups for a full page (html plus images).