Tungsten Replicator operates by reading information from the source database and transferring that information to the Transaction History Log (THL).

Each transaction within the THL includes the SQL statement or the row-based data written to the database. The information also includes, where possible, transaction specific options and metadata, such as character set data, SQL modes and other information that may affect how the information is written when the data is applied. The combination of the metadata and the global transaction ID also enable more complex data replication scenarios to be supported, such as Composite Active/Active, without fear of duplicating statement or row data application because the source and global transaction ID can be compared.

In addition to all this information, the THL also includes a timestamp and a record of when the information was written into the database before the change was extracted. Using a combination of the global transaction ID and this timing information provides information on the latency and how up to date a dataserver is compared to the original datasource.

Depending on the underlying storage of the data, the information can be reformatted and applied to different data servers. When dealing with row-based data, this can be applied to a different type of data server, or completely reformatted and applied to non-table based services such as MongoDB.

THL information is stored for each replicator service, and can also be exchanged over the network between different replicator instances. This enables transaction data to be exchanged between different hosts within the same network or across wide-area-networks.