Columns of a table are stored in either row-major format or column-major format in an in-memory DBMS. For a given table, one set of columns is stored in column-major format; another set of columns for a table are stored in row-major format. This way of storing columns of a table is referred to herein as dual-major format. In addition, a row in a dual-major table is updated “in-place”, that is, updates are made directly to column-major columns without creating an interim row-major form of the column-major columns of the row. Users may submit database definition language (“DDL”) commands that declare the row-major columns and column-major columns of a table.