If the STE scheme is dynamic then it also supports update operations like inserts and deletes.
There are several forms of STE including response-revealing STE where the response to the query is output in plaintext and response-hiding where the response to the query is output in encrypted form.
STE schemes guarantee that no information about the data or queries can be recovered from the encrypted data structure and tokens beyond a well-specified and "reasonable" leakage profile.
STE schemes with a variety of leakage profiles have been designed for a wide array of abstract data types and data structures including arrays, multi-maps,[2][1][3] dictionaries and graphs.
[1][4] STE is closely related to but different than searchable symmetric encryption.