The data in the data structures are processed by certain operations.
Traversing: Visiting each record so that items in the records can be accessed.
Searching: Finding the location of the record with a given key or value or finding all records which satisfy given conditions.
Inserting: Adding a new record to the data structure.
Deleting: Removing records from the data structure.
Sorting: Arranging records in some logical or numerical order. (Eg: Alphabetic order)
Merging: Combing records from two different sorted files into a single file.