Wide-area replication improves the availability and performance of globally distributed data repositories. Protocols needed for maintaining replication consistency may cause an undesirable overhead. Different use cases of repositories suggest the use of different replication protocols, each requiring different meta data. The WADIS middleware for wide-area replication support of distributed data repositories makes use of ready-made database resources such as triggers and views, employing the underlying database management system to support replication protocols, the implementation of which thus becomes more succinct and much simpler. WADIS enables the simultaneous maintenance of multiple meta data for different protocols, so that the latter can be chosen, plugged in and exchanged on the fly in order to adapt to the needs of different use cases best.