Some systems compress data utilized by a user mode software without the user mode software being aware of any compression taking place. To maintain that illusion, such systems prevent user mode software from being aware of and/or accessing the underlying compressed states of the data. While such an approach protects proprietary compression techniques used in such systems from being deciphered, such restrictions limit the ability of user mode software to use the underlying compressed forms of the data in new ways. Disclosed herein are various techniques for allowing user-mode software to access the underlying compressed states of data either directly or indirectly. Such techniques can be used, for example, to allow various user-mode software on a single system or on multiple systems to exchange data in the underlying compression format of the system(s) even when the user mode software is unable to decipher the compression format.