Query regarding Dispatch Action

[Shashidahanu Iyyanar]

I have the following mapping in the struts-config.xml:

<action parameter="method" path="/customerView" type="com.nucleus.web.app.customer.actions.CustomerViewAction">

<forward name="custDetails" path="/jsp/customer/CustomerDetails.jsp"/>
<forward name="custAddress" path="/jsp/customer/CustomerAddress.jsp"/>
<forward name="custLocalData" path="/jsp/customer/CustomerLocal.jsp"/>

</action>

As seen from the mapping,CustomerViewAction extends DispatchAction and the JSP pages such as CustomerDetails.jsp,CustomerAddress.jsp,etc. are all view JSP pages.

My question is that is it compulsory to give the name attribute as part of the action element os shown above?

[Merrill Higginson]

The name attribute is used by Struts to associate an action with an ActionForm. If you don't specify the name attribute, the ActionForm you receive as a parameter in the execute() method of your action class will be of type ActionForm, and will not be populated with any attributes. This is generally not what you want.

[Shashidahanu Iyyanar]

The action class will be used to display corresponding data from the database for the view JSP's.Data will be displayed in the JSP pages using Value Objects(VOs).Hence,is it required to specify a form name in case of view JSP's?Please reply to this as soon as possible.
Thanks in advance.