parsing url in ASP

[boccio]

I see quite a number of asp (and somewhat other scripting languages) pages that parse url in a way I'm not familiar with.... I used to seeing pages that parse url in standard way, like:
somepage.asp?a=value1&b=value2, etc.... but what about this?
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3973,612180,00.asp

I have hard time believing that there is actually a page like this, called 0,1,2,3,4.asp..... so, can anyone familiar with this shed some light on subject?

thx in advance

[boccio]

well, I found something on the subject....don't know wheter it applies to what I'm asking.
Seems like similar results can be accomplished by overriding 404 page and parsing url to get query info, and then using Server.Transfer to redirect to real page....
so 2,3024,22454,1.asp can actualy be parsed in 404 file to smth like
param1=2
param2=3024
param3=22454
param4=1
and produce page with real DB query.....

[websmith99]

What are the benefits of using this methodology instead of the traditional query string?

I would guess maybe security for one thing, as the URL itself doesn't give away information but rather passes values that are looked up in a hashtable by overridden 404 page to get their real data.

[boccio]

well, what I've read in regard to this is that using static-looking page name gives benefit when spiders index your page. Search engines are able to traverse these pages and most of them do not traverse pages with question marks in them, since they are afraid of entering into a never-ending traverse.
So I suppose it is more convinient to have url like http://www.hotscripts.com/Detailed/18178.html, than to call it detailed.asp?id=18178....

I just wonder about performance issues.... Is this worth additional effort of extra database call, thus 2x Server.Transfer ? not to mention additional coding.....