1. A method comprising the computer-implemented steps of: receiving a database statement that involves multidimensional data objects; determining that a plurality of operations need to be performed to execute the database statement, the operations including a first operation to retrieve measure data from the multidimensional data objects, wherein the measure data is dimensioned by a particular dimension, and a second operation that specifies a condition on a dimension attribute of the particular dimension; during performance of the first operation, returning a subset of the measure data from the multidimensional data objects by only returning measure data associated with dimension values, for the attribute, that satisfy the condition on the attribute.