I am working on an xml over http application that is not quite web services. I would like to be able to route request to servlets that are running within the same application context without sending them all the way through the web server in a container independant fashion ( if possible, container is websphere 4.x ); I can use the dispatcher on the front controller but for internal request the request parameters vary greatly and responses from one servlet code need to be processed before the next call. I deally I would like to be able to instantiate a request and response object, set the protocal headers and parameters and then use the dispatcher, but it doesn't look like this is an option. I was wondering what type of techniques can be imployed here, or if opening a socket/connection to the servlets uri is the only option.