Portfolio ↗

Terminology

2225 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 areas2225 Architecture Fundamentals77 Distributed Systems107 Data Architecture110 Cloud Architecture94 Networking88 API & Integration Architecture82 Reliability & Resilience75 Observability70 Performance & Capacity Engineering72 Security Architecture86 Cost Architecture & FinOps71 Business Architecture67 Architecture Communication67 Enterprise Architecture66 Legacy Modernization71 AI-Era Architecture74 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 Architecture69 Streaming & Real-Time Data69 Data Governance & Semantics74 Frontend & Experience Architecture66 Edge, Mobile & IoT68 Regulatory & Data Protection Architecture65 Assurance, Audit & Model Risk69
Kind Any concept801 practice736 pattern377 metric127 case-study77 tool62 protocol45

16 terms shown.

Term Kind Topic What it is
Dead Letter Queue DLQ, Poison Message Queue pattern Dead Letter Handling A separate destination for messages that cannot be processed successfully, so one bad message does not halt the stream behind it.
Denormalised Log Resolved-Asset Topic, Fat Event Stream pattern Kappa vs Lambda A second topic that republishes each record with its referenced data already resolved, so consumers read complete payloads instead of each performing the same joins against the normalised source of truth.
Follower Fetching Closest-Replica Fetch, Rack-Aware Consumption pattern Streaming Cost Letting a consumer read from the in-sync replica in its own availability zone instead of from the partition leader, which removes consumer-side cross-zone transfer charges and adds replication delay to every read.
Idempotent Consumer pattern Exactly-Once Semantics A message consumer whose effect is the same whether a message is processed once or many times, which is what makes at-least-once delivery safe.
Idempotent Sink pattern Exactly-Once Semantics A destination where writing the same record twice has the same effect as writing it once, which is what makes end-to-end exactly-once achievable at all.
Kappa Architecture pattern Kappa vs Lambda Treating the stream as the single processing path, and handling historical reprocessing by replaying the log through the same code.
Lambda Architecture Batch and Speed Layer, Dual-Path Analytics pattern Kappa vs Lambda Running the same computation as both a scheduled recomputation over all retained history and a streaming job over recent events, so that any defect in the fast path is erased by the next full recomputation.
Micro-Batching Mini-Batch Streaming, Discretised Stream Processing pattern Streaming vs Batch Executing a stream as a sequence of small bounded jobs on a fixed trigger interval, which buys batch failure semantics and atomic sink commits at the price of a latency floor equal to the interval.
Online Training Loop Continuous Training, Streaming Model Updates pattern Feature Freshness Training a model continuously on interaction events as they arrive rather than on a scheduled batch, trading the ability to gate a model artefact before serving for the ability to react to feedback within minutes.
Primary-Key-Partitioned Upsert Upsert Partitioning Contract, Key-Routed Upsert pattern Real-Time Analytical Stores Routing every version of a record to one partition so a real-time store can resolve the latest value locally - which buys sub-second latest-value queries and fixes the partition count and key budget for the ta…
Real-Time Serving Layer pattern Real-Time Serving Layer The read path that answers queries in milliseconds from precomputed or continuously updated state — where the design question is what to compute when.
Replay Pipeline pattern Kappa vs Lambda A single processing path that produces both live and historical results by re-running the same code over retained input, replacing the two-path Lambda arrangement.
Stream Enrichment pattern Streaming Joins Attaching reference data to a stream by lookup against a materialised table rather than by joining two unbounded streams.
Temporal Join As-Of Join, Point-in-Time Join pattern Streaming Joins A join that enriches an event with the reference value as it was when the event occurred, rather than as it is now - which is the difference between a reproducible result and a drifting one.
Tiered Storage Remote Storage Offload, Long-Term Log Retention, Hot-Cold Log Tiering pattern Streaming Cost Keeping recent log segments on broker local disk and older ones in object storage, which decouples retention from broker sizing and turns replay from an emergency measure into a routine design tool.
Unbundled Event Store Disaggregated Telemetry Store, Object-Storage Column Store pattern Real-Time Analytical Stores A telemetry store that separates writing, compaction and querying into independently scaled services over shared object storage and a metadata store, so retention cost stops being tied to the size of the query…