In Product Advertising API, the term "operation" is synonymous with the terms function and method. Product Advertising API operations are included in every request and they cause Product Advertising API web servers to take some action, for example, to find items in Amazon's databases or to find similar items. Think of each Product Advertising API operation as a different means of querying Amazon's databases for information. Product Advertising API does not offer any operations that place information on Amazon databases.

The following sections provide an overview of Product Advertising API operations.