The described technology is directed towards returning less data than is available for a data item in response to a request to a data service. A virtual graph node is returned in response to client requests, in which the virtual node comprises a relatively lightweight set of information relative to the full set of information for the data item, e.g., maintained in a main (graph) node. A requesting client indicates that a virtual node is desired, and receives a response comprising the virtual node, generally processed from the main node's data into a reduced subset of the main node. The main node may be cached at the data service, and returned if and when requested.