A system and method for usage metering software applications (or features or functions) by monitoring the data store underlying the software application. The data store function may be implemented in many ways, such as a Relational Database, Transactional Database, Network and Graph Database, Object-Oriented Database, Embedded Database, In-memory Database, Schema-less Database, Files and Directories, whether structured or unstructured, Configuration Registries, or Non-traditional Repositories. Business activities performed by the software application are tracked and are independent of hardware usage. Such usage data is valuable in a variety of contexts, including billing based on business activity.