<p>Are there any guidelines/best practices for deciding what type of data should be stored in the database?</p>

<p>For ex., is it ok to use database to store</p>

<ol>
<li>Application logs </li>
<li>Configuration details (like server IP addresses etc.)</li>
<li>System information (e.g., names of shell scripts, scheduling information for batch jobs, batch jobs status etc.)</li>
</ol>

<p>I have seen applications that use database for storing these. Is this acceptable? What are the pros and cons of such a design?</p>

To answer this question we have to understand what database storage provides that isn't available in say, flat file storage.
security - You can store stuff and be sure that updates, deletes and views would be controlled
audit - you can keep track of who made changes and when
distributed servers - if you have multiple application servers accessing a single database, you avoid storing the same data in multiple places
If these are desirables for your data, it's a good idea to store them in the database.