The operations listed in this section can be applied to any table type. They are listed for each table type individually. You should use these operations if they are the only possibility for the table type, or when the table type is not known when you write the program (for example, generic formal parameters in procedures).

If you know the table type, you should, for performance reasons, use the corresponding specific operation. For example, you should use the APPEND ... TO statement to fill index tables, but INSERT ... INTO TABLE to fill hashed or generic tables.