The EventLog library aims to be a replacement of the simple syslog() API provided on UNIX systems. The major difference between EventLog and syslog is that EventLog tries to add structure to messages. Where you had a simple non-structrured string in syslog() you have a combination of description and tag/value pairs. EventLog provides an interface to build, format and output an event record. The exact format and output method can be customized by the administrator via a configuration file.