1. A storage device having stored computer-executable instructions which, when executed by at least one processor, implement a method of providing synchronization to a local computing system, the method comprising: downloading a batch of changes in a heterogeneous batch, wherein the batch of changes is correlated to an anchor affiliated with a synchronization service, wherein the anchor is a reference point indicating time or relative order; serializing the batch of changes and the anchor to a non-volatile storage medium as a heterogeneous set; and after serializing the batch of changes to a non-volatile storage medium as a heterogeneous set, parsing out entities in the batch of changes into a plurality of different homogeneous collections of entities in in-memory representations, the plurality of different collections each corresponding to a different type of entity.