Patent ID: 8612421

Claim:
A method comprising the computer-implemented steps of: receiving, at a relational database server, a database statement that involves one or more multidimensional data objects in a multidimensional schema; determining that a plurality of operations need to be performed to execute the database statement, the plurality of operations including: a first operation that requires a multidimensional database server to retrieve particular measure data from the one or more multidimensional data objects and to provide the particular measure data to the relational database server, wherein the particular measure data is dimensioned by a particular dimension, and a second operation, to be performed by the relational database server, that specifies a condition on a dimension attribute of the particular dimension, wherein values of the dimension attribute do not affect where, within the one or more multidimensional data objects, the particular measure data is located; and during performance of the first operation, the multidimensional database server performing the step of: returning a subset of the particular measure data from the one or more multidimensional data objects to the relational database server by only returning, to the relational database server, measure data associated with dimension values, for the dimensiion attribute, that satisfy the condition on the dimension attribute, wherein the subset that is returned by the multidimensional database server to the relational database server includes less than all of the particular measure data; wherein the steps are performed by one or more computing devices.