Disclosed herein is a method, system, or non-transitory computer readable medium for evaluating a query on a columnar dataset comprising one or more dictionaries associated with columns in the dataset. The method includes receiving a request to perform a query comprising at least an operator for a columnar dataset on cloud storage. At least one column in the dataset is based on a dictionary, and the dictionary maps one or more values for a column to one or more respective identifiers. The method evaluates the operator on one or more values of the dictionary to generate an updated dictionary comprising updated values. The method may decode the updated dictionary into an updated column comprising updated data values.