Reducing flow delays in a data streaming application caused by lookup operations

Profiling data characterizing a data streaming application is used to predict data which will need to be retrieved by a processing element during execution of the data streaming application. Data is retrieved responsive to the prediction, in advance of actual demand by the processing element which requires it. Prediction may be based at least in part on upstream tuple contents, and could include other historical data retrieval patterns. In some embodiments, retrieval of predicted data may be delayed so that data is retrieved just in time.