1. A method, comprising: receiving a query that identifies a percentile value, information identifying a dataset stored in a database system, and one or more groups of a plurality of data elements included in the dataset, wherein each data element includes a data value, and wherein the database system comprises a plurality of segment nodes each storing a segment of the dataset and each networked to a master node, wherein each node comprises a computer system; for each group identified by the query: sorting data elements in the group in each segment node in parallel to generate a respective sorted segment dataset in each segment node, storing the sorted dataset segment from each segment node in a respective container on a same segment node, determining a count of the number of data elements in the group, at the same segment node, streaming one data element at a time from any of the sorted dataset segments in order of data value of each data element, and picking the data value corresponding to the percentile value from the streaming data elements using the count; and providing the picked data value from each group to the master node.