The Internet has turned into an important aspect of our information infrastructure and society, with the Web forming a part of our cultural heritage. Several initiatives thus set out to preserve it for the future. The resulting Web archives are by no means only a collection of historic Web pages. They hold a wealth of information that waits to be exploited, information that may be substantial to a variety of disciplines. With the time-line and metadata available in such a Web archive,

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... analyzes that go beyond mere information exploration become possible. In the context of the Austrian On-Line Archive (AOLA), we established a Data Warehouse as a key to this information. The Data Warehouse makes it possible to analyze a variety of characteristics of the Web in a flexible and interactive manner using on-line analytical processing (OLAP) techniques. Specifically, technological aspects such as operating systems and Web servers used, the variety of file types, forms or scripting languages encountered, as well as the link structure within domains, may be used to infer characteristics of technology maturation and impact or community structures.