The request function, suprising requests a valie. This could be a url variable, form variable, or some other value. For example if you were at the url:

http://www.somepage.com/home.asp?ID=23

and you had a script:

Request.QueryString("ID")

the line would return the value 23.

An example of where this can be used is on the M World News channel. The news is stored dynamically in a databasde so when you click on a link to the full story from the news homepage you are taken to a dynamic page which selects the story based on the ID of the story you want passed to the page as a url variable. For example the link could be:

http://www.mworld.us/news/story.asp?ID=52

Examples of use:

Request.QueryString("SomeURLVariable")
Request.Form("SomeFormElement")
Request.Cookies("SomeCookie")