According to an embodiment of the invention, a method is provided for allocating load to processing nodes in a processing cluster arranged as an object dependency network. The method includes 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, and receiving requests for processing. The method further includes determining to which of the processing nodes to allocate the requests for processing based on the load allocation function attributes, and allocating requests for processing to the processing nodes in accordance with that determination.