Is it possible to get usage data from SE?

Question

After having gone through some old questions that I have participated in, I have come to think what we are accumulating here is pretty useful data on demographics and usage of the site. I was hoping to ask a couple of questions and/or improve my answers based on real statistics from Academia.SE.

I recall some post, in junction with mod elections, about a particular service on SE where one could poll some basic queries on the database behind these sites, but I cant find it again. Is this service still available? does it exist for all SE sites (or only major ones like SO)?

PS: I hope my description is not too vague, if so do tell and I will try to improve it.

Answer 1

What I was thinking of is apparently called StackExchange Data Explorer and half an hour of calm thinking apparently was all I needed to reconstruct the train of thought that led me to where I saw it first.

Anyhow, I am supplying this as an answer, so it may be of use to whoever that may be interested in running queries on SE sites.