Patent attributes
Approaches presented herein enable replicating data records between a source database and a target database. More specifically, for a batch of change records in a table received from the source database, a first estimated replication duration needed to apply the batch as a bulk change to the target is determined. For the same batch, a second estimated replication duration needed to apply a set of changes in a single row of the table to the target is determined based on time penalties for each column in the row. A threshold quantity of rows at which the first duration equals a summed total of second durations for the quantity is calculated. The bulk change is selected if a number of rows in the batch exceeds the threshold. Applying change records singly is selected if the number of rows in the batch is less than the threshold.