1. A method, comprising: receiving a persistence package at a running system from one of a plurality of different software components, the persistence package including persistent data and metadata, the software components having persistent data in different formats that are foreign to the running system; extracting persistent data and metadata from the persistence package, the persistent data relating to diverse types of objects constructed at runtime of the software component and needed during more than one invocation of the software component, the metadata describing the persistent data, and comprising, at least in part, a description of the format of the persistent data; establishing, based on the extracted metadata, a transform for a storage format and a storage location for the persistent data; applying the transform to the persistent data to format the persistent data without using the software component from which the persistence package was received from the format of the software component into a storage format that is compatible with the receiving system and with a storage device of the running system independent of the software component; and storing the persistent data in the storage device in the storage format.