1. A computer program product, the computer program product comprising a computer readable storage medium having program code embodied therewith, the program code executable by at least one processor to perform: under control of a producing application, generating a partitioned data set; generating a descriptor that describes the partitioned data set by indicating a number of partitions in the partitioned data set, whether the partitioned data set is partitioned by one of key partitioning and balanced partitioning, and whether data in the partitioned data set has been sorted; and registering the descriptor in a registry; and under control of a consuming application, accessing the registry to obtain the descriptor of the partitioned data set; and using the descriptor to determine how to process the partitioned data set based on the number of partitions in the partitioned data set, whether the partitioned data set is partitioned by one of key partitioning and balanced partitioning, and whether the data in the partitioned data set has been sorted.