Final answer:
The developer should use CRUD operations for tasks that involve creating, reading, updating, and deleting database records. CRUD stands for Create, Read, Update, and Delete.
Step-by-step explanation:
The developer should use CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) operations for an application that needs to read, write, update, and delete database records. CRUD is a set of operations that are the building blocks of database interaction.
They correspond respectively to creating (writing), reading, updating, and deleting data. While POST, GET, and PATCH are HTTP methods used to interact with resources in web development, they do not themselves define database access methods, but rather the actions taken via APIs that can trigger CRUD operations.
For instance, a POST request can be used to create a new record (Create), a GET request can retrieve records (Read), a PATCH request can modify records (Update), and there's also the DELETE HTTP method which removes records (Delete).