Personally, I usually manage to make it work with the 'submit form' approach. Admittedly, it might require some work.
For *some* cases, there are easy 'shortcuts':
1) If the servlet can guess 'default values' for missing parameters.
2) If the parent page already happens to include the (non-dummy) form which generated it in the first place (like 'Google' - you submit a form, and in reply you get the same form again, plus results underneath).
Then you can submit this form (provided it doesn't perform 'database write').
For more general cases, you *can* use a "dummy form", just add some *hidden parameters*.
Basically, when the servlet(or
jsp) first writes the parent page, it can print a dummy form, which would preserve the original request parameters (as hidden params).
Example - assuming your param is called 'myParam' :
Now, when you decide to submit the dummy form (through javascript), it will carry the same parameter as the original request.
Hope this helps
[ February 27, 2007: Message edited by: Sol Mam-Orn ]