Aspects of the subject matter described herein relate to workflows. In aspects, an activity of a workflow may request data and provide a logical handle. In response, distributed workflow components use the logical handle to determine whether the requested data is available locally or remotely. If the data is available remotely, the components may obtain the data for the requesting entity. In the process of obtaining the data, the data may be serialized and deserialized. After the data is available locally, it is provided to the requesting entity.