The following are elements contained in business/report cubes.
Categories are the main tools for organizing data. They are components which correspond to particular collections of data in the data source. They are grouped in folders that are named to reflect information collections. A category can contain several subcategories.
Organizing data required by a user into multiple categories or multiple levels of categories is meaningful, and makes it easy to use. End users can use categories to find data elements they need to use without knowing the underlying table names although sometimes the table names are used as categories.
Dimension objects are cube elements that are the basis for analysis in a report. They present the availability and key performance of data, and characteristically return text data or dates, and answer the following question: who, when, what, where and which. A dimension object can be inserted wherever a field can be inserted, as a column or row in a crosstab, or as a group field or detail field in a table or banded object or as a category or series in a chart. They may be based on DBFields such as region and country or they could be based on formulas such as the year, quarter, or month portion of a date field.
Measure objects are numeric cube elements that are calculated dynamically at runtime. Measures can be used alone or calculated with other fields. A measure object can be inserted wherever a summary can be inserted. For instance, it can be inserted into the group header or footer panel in a table or banded object, or into a crosstab as an aggregate field. A measure object can also be used as a detail field in a banded object or table although it will display the same aggregate value for every detail line. JReport calculates values based on the group level at which the measure object is inserted such as total sales, average order size and number of orders from a customer.
Detail information objects provide additional information. It can be bound to a database field, group object, aggregation object or category/subcategory. Detail objects are used for displaying detailed field values such as address and phone number for a customer in a table or banded object. Detail objects cannot be used in crosstabs and charts.