A mechanism for handling transaction messages in asynchronous data replication in a database system, in which the database system includes a source node and a target node, and each transaction message has information concerning a row change to a table copy at the source node. The mechanism determines whether a first transaction message has a dependency on a preceding non-completed transaction message. Responsive to the first transaction message having a dependency on the preceding non-completed transaction, the mechanism holds the first transaction message, completes the preceding non-completed transaction message including applying the row change associated with the preceding non-completed transaction message to the table copy at the target node, and responsive to completing the preceding non-completed transaction message, releases the first transaction message and applying the row change associated with the first transaction message to the table copy at the target node.