Reporting and analysis are the main core functionalities of Web Intelligence. Web Intelligence report engine retrieves the data and stores it locally in a microcube report. The microcube can be described as a local structure of data, where every value of a dimension, attribute, or measure object can be sliced with any of the other object, or in more simple words, the user can display various types of aggregations and tables based on the data retrieved by the query. The following diagram is that of a microcube:

The data that was retrieved by the query is stored locally in the report and can be displayed by dragging-and-dropping the selected objects into the report. Retrieving data has nothing to do with displaying the data; a query can return huge volumes of data and many result objects, but none of them will be displayed. Usually, we will display the data in several tables or tabs, addressing different types of data levels.

So, why is this important...