A combination of synchronous and asynchronous replication of data is used to replicate a local database to a replicated database. The typical tradeoff between synchronous and asynchronous replication is optimized by using hybrid replication, which is to use synchronous replication for inserting new data and asynchronous replication for updating existing data. The combined use of synchronous and asynchronous in this manner provides an efficient replicated database where the replicated database can tolerate some delay in data updates but requires no data loss of new data.