To answer:
What is the difference between the request attribute and request parameter?
Request parameters are the result of submitting an HTTP request with a query
string that specifies the name/value pairs, or of submitting an HTML form that specifies the name/value pairs.
The name and the values are always strings.
Request attributes (more correctly called "request-scoped variables") are objects of any type that are explicitly placed on the request object via a call to the setAttribute() method. They are retrieved in
Java code via the getAttribute() method and in
JSP pages with Expression Language references.
[ July 28, 2005: Message edited by: Bear Bibeault ]