Unusual behaviour of the jsf engine -- require explanation

Question

Scenario:
A list page with pagination enabled on the dataTable. Each entity has 3 links 'EDIT', 'DELETE' and 'START/STOP'. On clicking EDIT , the detail of that row is taken and a details page is displayed for editing. On click of DELETE, a confirmation is asked and proceeds to delete the entity from the DB and page reloads with the row deleted.
On click of the START/STOP link, i start or stop that particular entity (its a background process) and the page just reloads.
Problem:
When user goes to the second or last page and clicks on START/STOP the prior page button in the pagination console gets disabled. This happens only in pages other than the first page.
Info:
The button was mapped to a method and the result of that method was mapped in faces-config.xml where the destination page was given as the same page.
Solution:
The mapping in faces-config.xml was removed for that method (as by default jsf will just refresh the page) and my problem is solved!.
Question:
What happens when you give a mapping in faces-config.xml for a method output (and subsequent navigation) and what happens when you dont provide any mapping for that method in faces-config.xml.
thanks,
Dilip

Answer 1

Question:
What happens when you give a mapping in
faces-config.xml for a method output (and subsequent
navigation) and what happens when you dont provide
any mapping for that method in faces-config.xml.I don't see how it impacts your scenario, but when you return null and do not use a navigation rule, the same view is re-used by the navigation handler (see section 7.4.1 in the specification). I interpret this to mean the same view which was restored during the Restore View phase.
If you could distill your original problem into a small example application that exhibits the problem, I'd be interested in taking a look.