Newbie question, Which way is best?

Hi, I have a script that contains a form and a pagination routine that calls itself. I want to pass an sql query along with some other variables to the called script. The code to acheive this, using the form, is working but when I try to write the code, using the scripts URL to call itself, I am having problems successfully passing the SQL query string within the url. The form is used to construct a string containing a sql query. Whereas when the pagination calls the script all it does is changes the LIMIT part of the sql query. I know it won't pass the original query unless I add it to the URL address. Is there a 'proper' way to write this code? Should I add the query to the URL or is there a better way? TIA George