Austrian Online Archive Processing: Analyzing Archives of the World Wide Web

With the popularity of the World Wide Web and the recognition of its worthiness of being archived we find numerous projects aiming at creating large-scale repositories containing excerpts and snapshots of Web data. Interfaces are being created that allow users to surf through time, analyzing the evolution of Web pages, or retrieving information using search interfaces. Yet, with the timeline and metadata available in such a Web archive, additional analyzes that go beyond mere information exploration, become possible. In this paper we present the AOLAP project building a Data Warehouse of such a Web archive, allowing its analysis and exploration from different points of view using OLAP technologies. Specifically, technological aspects such as operating systems and Web servers used, geographic location, and Web technology such as the use of file types, forms or scripting languages, may be used to infer e.g. technology maturation or impact.