URGENT: Getting app module service method result and calling web service??

Question

We have a .jar from another vendor that allows us to interact with an FOP rendering process. This .jar has methods that allow us to pass several parameters which results in the creation of the PDF which is stored in the database.
We need to create the XML, which we've done, via view objects and a method in our application module. The developers at this point, have placed the code to call the service method into the model code that generates the XML. The actual .jar file for this is in the viewcontroller area.
Is this a "reasonable" approach? ( that is, importing view object jar in model)
The web service needs to have several parameters sent to it, most of which are configured in the web.xml. They are now being passed via a data action to the model's service method.
Shouldn't the data action be written more like the following - note: some questions in here as well...
public void onShowPdf( DataActionContext ctx )
// note, you can get here from 5 different places in the application and we need to be able to retrieve the bindings from these separate places for proper generation... how??
AppModule am = (AppModule) getAm();
String strXML = am.getXML(...);
// get web.xml values from session context...
PDFArchiver stub = new PDFArchiver();
stub.generate( send prms here );
// the next page just needs to have 3 of the parameters exposed from this page to yield the results of the generated pdf (retrieve from db)
// what would be the best way to get the parameters over there?
} // onShowPDF
after this data action, it simply forwards to the next page, which has a frame to display the pdf with an [ok] button at the bottom. The pdf is rendered via a Servlet.
one last question...
Right now, the service method was dropped on the data action, and it is automatically invoked ( we've bound the 8 parameters to it by over-riding initializeMethodParameters). If we were to switch it so the method RETURNED the XML, how would we get the results back while INSIDE A DATA ACTION? I could see if we called it by invoking a service method from the app module instance, but how do you do it in the lifecycle of the data action??
Whew, that's all the questions for now.
Any help, again, would be GREATLY appreciated.

Answer 1

Most of the items in this previous post have been addressed. The one problem that remains is that we use a servlet to display the PDF. The servlet reads 3 parameters from the URL to send to a service method that reads and streams the PDF to the browser.
HOWEVER, the user can view source and then paste parameters into the URL and view whatever he wants. So:
1. How can we prevent the servlet parameters from being seen inside the source? OR, how can we simply prevent the user from invoking the view pdf servlet with other parameters?
2. We've temporarily, written a data action (displayPDF) which has no service method. In the findForward data action, we grab the bindings that the servlet needs from other pages (4 different binding containers), then invoke the service method and write the data to the response object. This seems to work. So, our page has an iframe with the src="displayPDF.do".
Again, should this be done another way? Seems strange to have a data action that "acts like a servlet"...
Thanks for feedback.