What is the difference between synchronous and asynchronous programming (in node.js)

The difference is that in the first example, the program will block in the first line. The next line (console.log) will have to wait.

In the second example, the console.log will be executed WHILE the query is being processed. That is, the query will be processed in the background, while your program is doing other things, and once the query data is ready, you will do whatever you want with it.

So, in a nutshell: The first example will block, while the second won't.

The output of the following two examples:

// Example 1 - Synchronous (blocks)
var result = database.query("SELECT * FROM hugetable");
console.log("Query finished");
console.log("Next line");


// Example 2 - Asynchronous (doesn't block) 
database.query("SELECT * FROM hugetable", function(result) {
    console.log("Query finished");
});
console.log("Next line");

Would be:

1. Query finished
Next line
2. Next line
Query finished

Note
While Node itself is single threaded, there are some task that can run in parallel. For example, File System operations occur in a different process.

That's why Node can do async operations: one thread is doing file system operations, while the main Node thread keeps executing your javascript code. In an event-driven server like Node, the file system thread notifies the main Node thread of certain events such as completion, failure, or progress, along with any data associated with that event (such as the result of a database query or an error message) and the main Node thread decides what to do with that data.

You can read more about this here: How the single threaded non blocking IO model works in Node.js

The difference between these two approaches is as follows:

Synchronous way: It waits for each operation to complete, after that only it executes the next operation. For your query: The console.log() command will not be executed until & unless the query has finished executing to get all the result from Database.

Asynchronous way: It never waits for each operation to complete, rather it executes all operations in the first GO only. The result of each operation will be handled once the result is available. For your query: The console.log() command will be executed soon after the Database.Query() method. While the Database query runs in the background and loads the result once it is finished retrieving the data.

Use cases

1. If your operations are not doing very heavy lifting like querying huge data from DB then go ahead with Synchronous way otherwise Asynchronous way.

2. In Asynchronous way you can show some Progress indicator to the user while in background you can continue with your heavy weight works. This is an ideal scenario for GUI apps.

This would become a bit more clear if you add a line to both examples:

var result = database.query("SELECT * FROM hugetable");
console.log(result.length);
console.log("Hello World");

The second one:

database.query("SELECT * FROM hugetable", function(rows) {
   var result = rows;
   console.log(result.length);
});
console.log("Hello World");

Try running these, and you’ll notice that the first (synchronous) example, the result.length will be printed out BEFORE the 'Hello World' line. In the second (the asynchronous) example, the result.length will (most likely) be printed AFTER the "Hello World" line.

That's because in the second example, the database.query is run asynchronously in the background, and the script continues straightaway with the "Hello World". The console.log(result.length) is only executed when the database query has completed.