The subject matter described herein relates to implementation of a dictionary in a column-based, in-memory database where values are not stored directly, rather, for each column, a dictionary is created with all distinct values. For each row, a reference to the corresponding value in the dictionary is stored. In one aspect, data is stored in a memory structure organized in a column store format defined by a plurality of columns and a plurality of rows. A dictionary for each column in the memory structure is generated. The dictionary has distinct values for each column. A reference to the dictionary is generated for each column in the memory structure. The dictionary and the reference to the dictionary are stored in the memory structure.