Terminology

454 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 areas454 Architecture Fundamentals16 Distributed Systems73 Data Architecture71 Cloud Architecture55 Networking13 API & Integration Architecture17 Reliability & Resilience16 Observability14 Performance & Capacity Engineering13 Security Architecture50 Cost Architecture & FinOps12 Business Architecture9 Architecture Communication8 Enterprise Architecture8 Legacy Modernization11 AI-Era Architecture15 Software Architecture & Engineering19 Architecture Patterns15 Architecture Decision-Making11 The Architect's Meta-Skills8

Kind Any concept166 practice107 pattern93 case-study26 tool26 protocol22 metric14

4 terms shown.

Term	Kind	Topic	What it is
Error Budget	metric	Reliability & Resilience	The amount of unreliability an SLO permits, treated as a resource that feature velocity spends.
RTO and RPO Recovery Time Objective, Recovery Point Objective	metric	Reliability & Resilience	How long recovery may take (RTO) and how much data may be lost (RPO), the two numbers that determine the cost of a resilience design.
Service Level Indicator SLI	metric	Reliability & Resilience	The actual measurement of a service's behaviour that an objective is set against — a ratio of good events to valid events.
Service Level Objective SLO	metric	Reliability & Resilience	An internal target for a service level indicator, set below the level at which users notice, and used to decide whether to ship or to stabilise.