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

6 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.
Dead Letter Queue DLQ	pattern	API & Integration	A separate queue that receives messages which could not be processed after a set number of attempts, so they neither block the consumer nor disappear.
Event-Driven Integration	pattern	API & Integration	Systems integrating by publishing and consuming events rather than by calling each other's APIs.
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.
Rate Limiting	pattern	API & Integration	Bounding how many requests a caller may make in a window, to protect capacity and enforce fair use.
Webhook	pattern	API & Integration	An HTTP callback from a provider to a consumer-supplied URL when an event occurs, replacing polling with push.