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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

18 terms shown.

Term Kind Topic What it is
API Gateway pattern API & Integration A single entry point in front of a set of services that handles authentication, rate limiting, routing and protocol translation.
Cursor Opacity Opaque Continuation Token, Sealed Cursor pattern Pagination & Filtering Making a pagination cursor an untyped token the client cannot construct or interpret, so the server keeps the freedom to change what it encodes without breaking callers.
Destination Isolation Per-Destination Queues, Independent Fan-Out pattern Event-Driven Integration Fanning events out by writing to a queue per destination rather than delivering synchronously to many, so that one failing or slow destination cannot delay, block or duplicate delivery to the others.
Event-Driven Integration pattern Event-Driven Integration Integrating systems by delivering events rather than by polling or synchronous calls — including the delivery guarantees the receiver must be told about.
File-Based Integration pattern Legacy Integration Exchanging data as files on a schedule via SFTP or shared storage — dated, still ubiquitous, and workable when its failure modes are handled explicitly.
Idempotency Key pattern API & Integration A client-generated unique value sent with a request so the server can recognise a retry and return the original result instead of acting twice.
Idempotency Key pattern Idempotency Keys A client-generated identifier that lets a server recognise a retried request and return the original result instead of performing the action twice.
Message Router pattern Integration Patterns A component that inspects a message and forwards it to one of several destinations based on its content or headers.
Message Translator pattern Integration Patterns A component converting a message between two systems' formats, so neither has to adopt the other's model.
Outcome Certainty Taxonomy Retryability Classification, Four-State Error Model pattern API Error Handling Classifying every external response into definitely-failed-retryable, definitely-failed-terminal, definitely-succeeded, or unknown - and giving the fourth state a real resolution path rather than a guess.
Persisted Query pattern GraphQL Registering allowed queries in advance and having clients send an identifier instead of the query text.
Rate Limiting pattern API & Integration Bounding how many requests a caller may make in a window, to protect capacity and enforce fair use.
Rate Limiting in Practice Throttling, Quota Enforcement pattern Rate Limiting Bounding how much work one caller can demand, the algorithm choice that shows through to users, and why distributed enforcement is approximate.
Stable Event Identity Immutable Event ID, Delivery Deduplication Key pattern Webhooks An event identifier that is identical across every delivery attempt of the same event - the single property that makes at-least-once delivery usable, and the one most often broken by regenerating the ID on retry.
Token Bucket pattern Rate Limiting A rate-limiting algorithm holding a replenishing allowance of tokens, permitting controlled bursts while bounding the sustained rate.
Tolerant Reader pattern Backward Compatibility A consumer that ignores fields it does not recognise and depends only on what it actually needs, so a producer can add to a contract without breaking it.
Version Transformation Layer Version Shim, Compatibility Transform, Request/Response Rewriting pattern API Versioning Implementing an API once against its current shape and expressing every historical version as a pair of request and response transformations, so supporting an old version costs a small testable function rather…
Webhook pattern API & Integration An HTTP callback from a provider to a consumer-supplied URL when an event occurs, replacing polling with push.