A shared-nothing database system is provided in which the rows of each table are assigned to "slices", and multiple copies ("duplicas") of each slice are stored across the persistent storage of multiple nodes. Requests to read data from a particular row of the table may be handled by any node that stores a duplica of the slice to which the row is assigned. For each slice, a single duplica of the slice is designated as the "primary duplica". All DML operations are performed by the node that has the primary duplica of the slice to which the target row is assigned. The changes are then propagated other duplicas ("secondary duplicas") of the same slice.