Patent ID: 7444640

Claim:
A method, for allocating load to processing nodes in a processing cluster arranged as an object dependency network, the method comprising: establishing at a load allocation function a plurality of load allocation function attributes whose values are dependant on the values of attributes of the processing nodes, the load allocation function attributes comprising: load ratio attributes, each load ratio attribute corresponding to a respective node and having a value indicating a load that has been processed by the respective node in a predetermined time period as a proportion of a nominal load to be processed, rate ratio attributes, each rate ratio attribute corresponding to the respective node and having a value indicating a rate of requests for processing that have been processed by the respective node in a predetermined time period as a proportion of a nominal rate of requests for processing to be processed, and load share attributes, each load share attribute corresponding to the respective node and having a value indicating a proportion of the total load on the processing cluster that is to be allocated to the respective node, wherein said each load share attribute is dependent on the load ratio attribute and the rate ratio attribute of the respective node; receiving requests for processing; determining to which of the processing nodes to allocate the requests for processing based on the load share attributes; allocating requests for processing to each processing node in accordance with the load share attribute of the respective node; and when the load that has been processed by the respective node changes and/or the rate of requests for processing that have been processed by the respective node changes, automatically recalculating the load share attribute of the respective node.