1. A method of source-side merging of distributed transactions prior to replication in a transaction processing system that includes a plurality of nodes and a replication engine, wherein a distributed transaction occurs at a plurality of the nodes, a first node on a source system of the transaction processing system including (i) a database, (ii) an audit trail that stores database change events from the database of the first node, and (iii) an audit trail reader, and one or more other nodes on the source system each including (i) a database, (ii) an audit trail that stores database change events from the database of the respective node, and (iii) a daemon that receives the database change events from the audit trails of their respective nodes, the method comprising: (a) initiating a distributed transaction in the transaction processing system which updates the database of the first node and the database at one or more of the other nodes; (b) capturing the database updates in the audit trails of the respective nodes involved with the distributed transaction; (c) the first node on the source system receiving and merging the database change events from the audit trails of each of the nodes involved in the distributed transaction; and (d) replicating the merged database change events via the replication engine to a target system of the transaction processing system only from the first node on the source system, wherein the audit trail reader sends requests to the respective daemons to send the database change events from the audit trails of each of the nodes involved in the distributed transaction to the first node on the source system for use in the merging, and wherein the first node on the source system receives the database change events from the audit trails of each of the nodes involved in the distributed transaction via the daemons of the respective nodes.