Hi,
number of records (actually cells) can be traced in OLAP events on query level.
Design Studio, independent if you use setVariable or setFilter is passing the filter to the backend. so in both cases, the java server (BIP APS) only gets the amount of data which is returned after the filtering.
in browser, the data is passed in chunks (paging is implemented, max 100x100 or so) when you use crosstab, in SDK components complete result set is coming back, but this is not a big deal. anyway SDK is restricted on 10000 cells currently.
in your scenario, when you filter the 5 queries separatelly, you just get 5 resultsets, but the ABAP stack is returning already the filtered data.
Karol