Abstract: A system and method are provided for determining a processing engine to process a request from a client in a distributed client-server architecture. Requests from the clients are handled by a request management module, which determines a processing entity for each request. A processing entity may be one or more processing engines, or one or more additional request management modules in conjunction with additional processing engines. Processing entities register with the request management module as available to process the requests. Processing entities may be determined based on the information supplied in the requests, such as, for example, required characteristics of the processing entities. Once the processing entity is determined, the request is transferred to that processing entity, where the request is processed. Results of processing the request are transferred to the original request management module, from where they are transferred back to the requesting client.