Cross tabulation operation is performed within a columnar database management system. The columnar database management system receives a request to perform a cross-tabulation operation on a set of database tables. The columnar database management system determines values of cross tabulation operation for each row of the result. The columnar database management system determines a domain for each value of the row dimension corresponding to a row combination. The columnar database management system determines an intersection set of the domains corresponding to values of the row dimensions for the row combination. The columnar database management system determines a value for the result column for the row combination as an aggregate value based on the records of the intersection set.