Changing from cookies to URL rewriting for session management for

Hello, I am trying to configure Tomcat to use URL rewriting for
session management and am unable to understand why it is not working.
I have done many searchs for answers and realise that I may
fundamentally not understand something obvious, but hope someone is
able to help.

The reason I want to do this is simply to test how an application I'm
using functions without cookies, something that business requirements
needs to be supported. I have disabled cookies in the server by
setting in context.xml. I know this is
working as I can see the HTTP data being sent and there is no cookie
header present. Also the application keeps prompting for login.

However the JSESSIONID is clearly not present, which is what I would
expect to appear. In the code, each "action" that results in a page
transistion makes a call in the following form:
request.getRequestDispatcher("index.jsp").forward(request, response);

As I understand, calling this method is supposed to perform all the
logic of inserting session data, including the JSESSIONID, however
this doesn't seem to be working. If you can help, it will be greatly
appreciated. As I say, I've looked for pages but haven't found
anything that clearly explains how Tomcat needs to be configured and
how an application needs to be written. All help will be greatly
appreciated.


James