...
The report elements form a tree structure, and every report element inherits the capability to contain an unlimited number of child elements.
Some elements like org.pentaho.reportdesigner.crm.report.model.dataset.DataSetsReportElement exlicitely explicitely check to contain only a cretain certain kind of child elements. This limitation can be relaxed if required. The base class ReportElement does not impose such restrictions by default and it would be possible to add functions directly as a child element of a label.
...