Terminology

2185 terms, tools, patterns and metrics an architect is expected to use precisely. Each one gets a short explanation of what it is, and — where it matters — what it is commonly confused with. Search filters as you type; the column headers sort.

All areas2185 Architecture Fundamentals77 Distributed Systems107 Data Architecture110 Cloud Architecture89 Networking88 API & Integration Architecture82 Reliability & Resilience75 Observability70 Performance & Capacity Engineering72 Security Architecture81 Cost Architecture & FinOps66 Business Architecture67 Architecture Communication67 Enterprise Architecture66 Legacy Modernization66 AI-Era Architecture69 Software Architecture & Engineering71 Architecture Patterns71 Architecture Decision-Making63 The Architect's Meta-Skills61 Delivery & Release Engineering66 Platform Engineering & Developer Experience70 Testing & Quality Architecture66 Data Platform Architecture64 Streaming & Real-Time Data69 Data Governance & Semantics69 Frontend & Experience Architecture66 Edge, Mobile & IoT68 Regulatory & Data Protection Architecture65 Assurance, Audit & Model Risk64

Kind Any concept785 practice729 pattern362 metric125 case-study77 tool62 protocol45

21 terms shown.

Term	Kind	Topic	What it is
Additive-Only Evolution Non-Breaking Change Discipline, Tolerant Reader Contract	concept	API Versioning	Establishing the compatibility contract before the first release - unknown fields ignored, unknown enum values defaulted - so that most future change requires no version at all.
At-Least-Once Delivery Redelivery Semantics, Duplicate-Tolerant Delivery	concept	Webhooks	The delivery guarantee that a message will arrive but may arrive more than once - the strongest practical guarantee across an unreliable boundary, which pushes the deduplication responsibility onto the receiver.
Backward Compatibility	concept	API & Integration	The property that a new version of a producer continues to work with clients written against the old version.
Binary Serialisation	concept	Message Formats	Encoding messages compactly using a schema rather than as self-describing text, trading readability for size and parse speed.
Canonical Data Model Common Data Model, Enterprise Data Model	concept	Integration Patterns	One shared representation that every producer maps into and every consumer reads from, trading N×M translations for a single model that grows monotonically and can never be trimmed.
Command vs Notification Event Semantics, Obligation vs Fact	concept	Event-Driven Integration	Whether a published message requests an action someone is responsible for, or states a fact the publisher does not care who consumes - and why conflating them causes outages.
Compatibility Mode	concept	Schema Registry	The registry setting that defines which schema changes are permitted — backward, forward, full, or none — and therefore what upgrade order is safe.
Connection Pinning Sticky Connection Imbalance, L4 Balancing of Multiplexed Protocols	concept	gRPC APIs	The traffic imbalance that appears when a layer-4 balancer distributes long-lived multiplexed connections instead of requests, so new backend capacity receives no traffic until clients reconnect.
Deployment Order Coupling Upgrade Ordering Constraint, Schema Rollout Order	concept	Schema Registry	The constraint that a schema compatibility mode really expresses - which side of an interface must be upgraded first - rather than any statement about whether a change is safe.
Event Notification vs Event-Carried State	concept	Event-Driven Integration	Whether an event carries only the fact that something happened, or also the data a consumer needs to act on it.
GraphQL N+1 Problem DataLoader Pattern	concept	GraphQL	The query explosion that occurs when each item in a list independently resolves its nested fields, turning one request into hundreds of database calls.
gRPC Status Codes	concept	gRPC APIs	A fixed set of codes that classify failures and tell a client whether retrying is appropriate.
HTTP Method Semantics	concept	REST Design	The safety, idempotency and cacheability guarantees each HTTP method carries, which clients and intermediaries rely on.
Idempotency Scope	concept	Idempotency Keys	The boundary within which an idempotency key is unique and meaningful — per account, per endpoint, or global — and the retention window it lives for.
Integration Coupling Modes	concept	Integration Patterns	The distinct dimensions along which two systems can be coupled — temporal, format, location, semantic — each with its own remedy.
Message Formats	concept	Message Formats	JSON, Protobuf, Avro and the rest — chosen by who the consumer is and how the schema will evolve.
N+1 Resolution DataLoader Problem	concept	GraphQL	The default GraphQL execution behaviour in which each field resolver runs per item, producing one query per row instead of one query per request.
Retryable Error	concept	API Error Handling	An error whose cause may resolve on its own, which a client may safely attempt again — as distinct from one that will fail identically.
Shared Database Integration Integration Database	concept	Legacy Integration	Two or more applications reading and writing the same database directly — the most damaging integration pattern and the hardest to unwind.
Subject Naming Strategy	concept	Schema Registry	How schemas are keyed in a registry — per topic, per record type, or both — which determines whether one topic may carry several event types.
Webhook Retry Policy	concept	Webhooks	The provider's schedule for re-attempting failed deliveries, and the contract the receiver must be built against.