Choosing between calling asp.net core blazor methods synchronously or asynchronously

Question

I have a CRUD app in Blazor that simply fetches the assignment lists from a table and has an AssignmentReminderService for data access layer that has a method (async version)

    public async Task<AssignmentReminder> AddAssignment(AssignmentReminder assignment)
    {
        _context.assignments.Add(assignment);
        await _context.SaveChangesAsync();
        return assignment;
    }

I can also call the method with synchromus code as :

    public  AssignmentReminder AddAssignment(AssignmentReminder assignment)
    {
        _context.assignments.Add(assignment);
         _context.SaveChanges();
        return assignment;
    }

Now it is just one database being accessed from a local server(could be hosted on cloud as well) with just one assignment table and the default authentication/authorization tables generated when one uses Individual User Account (aspnetusers, aspnetroles etc) Can someone let me know which of the two ways I should use (between async or sync) method declaration?

Answer 1

In the general case, you should use asynchronous APIs if they are available. This will result in greater scalability on the server side, since asynchrony will allow the calling request thread to be used for other requests while the asynchronous operation is in progress.

There are specific scenarios where this guideline doesn't apply. E.g., if you're calling a generic asynchronous API (like Stream.ReadAsync) but you know that the implementation is actually synchronous (like MemoryStream). But in general, if there's an asynchronous API, then that's the one you should use.

Answer 2

which of the two ways I should use (between async or sync) method declaration?

The first one.

The scarce resource here are the Threads. You want to keep their number down, and the first approach enables that by releasing the Thread to do other work.

In the second approach the Thread is suspended for the duration of the I/O operation. You would need more Threads to handle the same number of requests.

So using async I/O lets the same hardware handle more requests at the same time.