1. A system for the distribution of service requests to one or more query servers that are suitable for fulfilling the service requests, the system being operable on a plurality of servers, the system comprising: an interface component, the interface component being; suitable for operation on the plurality of servers, suitable to determine if the service request is to be directed to a pre-identified query server and suitable for distributing the service request to either the pre-identified query server or a query server available to accept the service request; and a first server based mechanism for receiving information related to the at least one query server, the server based mechanism communicating with the interface component and directing the interface component in the distribution of service requests.