Embodiments of the invention relate to a multi-level database compression technique to compress table data objects stored in pages. A compact dictionary structure is encoded that represents frequent values of data at any level of granularity. More than one level of compression is provided, wherein input to a finer level of granularity is an output of a coarser level of granularity. Based upon the encoded dictionary structure, a compression technique is applied to a stored page to compress each row on the page. Similarly, a de-compression technique may be applied to decompress the compressed data, utilizing the same dictionary structures at each level of granularity.