controlled by a user directly or indirectly by selecting the required hierarchies levels and so on it may also be initiate by the system and controlled by additional metadata available about the measurements or hierarchies the block 501 represents a set of initial measurements the measurements may be extracted from a database and be of various types i e from the various relations stored in the system 100 the measurements may also be composed or derived such as measurements resulting from calculations or other processes that define relations this may furthermore include measurements derived from previous applications of the processes denoted by 500 600 or 700 and described herein the set 501 may be located in memory or in other storage devices and it may furthermore be implicitly defined by including references to relations or subsets thereof the starting point for the process is an initial set of measurements about dimensions selected for multidimensional processing in a hypercube which measurements are included in 501 may be determined by the system from the dimensions of the hypercube being populated with points for example by including relations that are supported by subsets of the dimensions it can also be left to the user performing the multidimensional analysis in the system to select or define the relations included or a combination of both the text 502 specifies that in order to perform the process 500 between selected level.