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
CI/CD Continuous Integration, Continuous Delivery	practice	Software Architecture	Merging work continuously into a shared trunk with automated verification, and keeping every commit in a state that could be released.
Domain-Driven Design DDD	practice	Software Architecture	Modelling software around the business domain, with boundaries drawn where the language of the business changes.
Refactoring	practice	Software Architecture	Changing the internal structure of code without changing its external behaviour, in small verified steps.
SOLID	practice	Software Architecture	Five object-oriented design principles — single responsibility, open/closed, Liskov substitution, interface segregation, dependency inversion.
Test Pyramid	practice	Software Architecture	A distribution of tests weighted towards many fast unit tests, fewer integration tests, and very few slow end-to-end tests.
Trunk-Based Development	practice	Software Architecture	All developers integrating small changes into a single shared branch at least daily, with long-lived branches avoided entirely.