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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

45 terms shown.

Term Kind Topic What it is
Anycast Routing protocol Routing & BGP Announcing the same IP address from many locations so that network routing delivers each client to the topologically nearest one.
Authorization Code Flow with PKCE PKCE protocol OAuth 2.0 & OIDC The OAuth flow recommended for all client types, in which an authorisation code is exchanged for tokens using a proof key that binds the exchange to the original requester.
BGP Border Gateway Protocol protocol Routing & BGP The protocol by which autonomous systems advertise which address ranges they can reach, determining how traffic finds any destination on the internet.
Cache-Control protocol Content Delivery Networks The HTTP header directing how a response may be cached and for how long, by browsers, proxies and CDNs.
Constrained Protocol MQTT, CoAP, LwM2M protocol Constrained Protocols Messaging protocols designed for devices and networks where power, bandwidth and packet size are hard limits rather than considerations.
Content Security Policy protocol Frontend Security A response header declaring which sources of script, style and other resources the browser may load, which turns a script injection from a compromise into a blocked request.
Credit-Based Flow Control protocol Backpressure & Flow Control A scheme where a receiver grants the sender a budget of bytes or messages it may transmit, replenished as the receiver consumes.
DNS Domain Name System protocol Networking The distributed directory that resolves names to addresses, and a surprisingly load-bearing part of most architectures.
GraphQL protocol API & Integration A query language and runtime where the client specifies exactly which fields it needs, against a typed schema, usually via a single endpoint.
gRPC protocol API & Integration A contract-first RPC framework using Protocol Buffers over HTTP/2, with generated clients and servers and first-class streaming.
gRPC as a Transport protocol gRPC Transport A binary contract-first RPC protocol over HTTP/2 — efficient and strongly typed for internal service-to-service calls, awkward at the browser edge.
Happy Eyeballs Connection Racing, Dual-Stack Attempt Ordering protocol Networking Starting a second connection attempt on the other address family a few hundred milliseconds after the first, so a broken IPv6 or IPv4 path costs the user a short delay instead of a connection timeout.
HTTP Protocol Versions HTTP/1.1, HTTP/2, HTTP/3, QUIC protocol HTTP/1.1, HTTP/2 & HTTP/3 What each HTTP version changed, which problem it solved, and where the benefit actually shows up.
HTTP/2 Multiplexing protocol HTTP/1.1, HTTP/2 & HTTP/3 Carrying many concurrent request/response streams over a single TCP connection, removing the need for multiple connections per origin.
JSON Web Token JWT protocol Security Architecture A signed, self-contained token carrying claims, which a service can validate locally without calling the issuer.
JWKS JSON Web Key Set protocol Tokens & JWTs A published endpoint listing an issuer's current public keys, allowing resource servers to validate token signatures without a shared secret and to survive key rotation.
Model Context Protocol MCP protocol AI-Era Architecture An open protocol that standardises how AI applications connect to external tools, data sources and prompts.
Mutual TLS mTLS, Client Certificate Authentication protocol TLS & Certificates TLS in which both ends present certificates, so the server authenticates the client cryptographically rather than by a shared secret.
OAuth 2.0 protocol Security Architecture An authorisation framework that lets an application obtain scoped, delegated access to a resource without handling the user's credentials.
OpenID Connect OIDC protocol Security Architecture An identity layer over OAuth 2.0 that adds a signed ID token asserting who the user is and how they authenticated.
Private Set Intersection PSI, Private Join and Compute protocol Privacy-Enhancing Technologies A cryptographic protocol that lets two parties learn the size of - or an aggregate over - the overlap between their datasets without either learning the other's non-matching members.
Problem Details RFC 9457, RFC 7807 protocol API Error Handling A standard JSON structure for HTTP error responses, giving machine-readable type, human-readable detail, and room for extensions.
Protocol Buffers Protobuf protocol gRPC Transport A binary serialisation format with a schema definition language, generating typed code and enforcing explicit compatibility rules through field numbering.
QUIC HTTP/3 protocol HTTP/1.1, HTTP/2 & HTTP/3 A transport built on UDP that provides streams, encryption and congestion control, removing TCP's head-of-line blocking and reducing connection setup latency.
Raft protocol Consensus Protocols A consensus algorithm designed to be understandable, decomposing agreement into leader election, log replication and safety.
Reactive Streams protocol Backpressure & Flow Control A specification for asynchronous stream processing in which the consumer requests a specific number of items, making backpressure part of the protocol rather than an afterthought.
Redlock protocol Distributed Locking An algorithm for distributed locking across independent Redis instances, and the subject of a well-known critique about what locks can guarantee at all.
REST RESTful API protocol API & Integration An architectural style for APIs built on resources identified by URLs, manipulated with uniform HTTP methods, and stateless requests.
Retry-After protocol Rate Limiting A response header telling a client how long to wait before retrying, turning a rejection into actionable guidance.
Secure Aggregation Private Aggregation, Cohort-Level Aggregation protocol Privacy-Enhancing Technologies A cryptographic protocol that lets a server learn only the sum of many clients' model updates and never any single client's update, which is what makes an on-device training claim survive scrutiny.
Secure Boot Chain protocol Edge Security & Attestation Each boot stage verifying the signature of the next before executing it, anchored in immutable hardware, so only authorised software runs.
Server Name Indication SNI, TLS Host Extension protocol TLS & Certificates The cleartext hostname a client sends in its first TLS message, letting one address serve many certificates and letting a proxy route a session before it decrypts anything.
Server-Sent Events SSE, EventSource protocol WebSockets & Realtime A one-way streaming protocol over plain HTTP in which the server pushes text events to the client on a long-lived response.
TCP Handshake protocol TCP/IP The three-way SYN / SYN-ACK / ACK exchange that establishes a TCP connection, costing one round trip before any data moves.
TCP/IP protocol Networking The layered protocol suite underneath essentially all application traffic — IP routes packets, TCP turns them into a reliable ordered stream.
TCP/IP for Architects protocol TCP/IP What an architect actually needs from the transport layer — handshake cost, congestion behaviour, head-of-line blocking, and when to abandon TCP entirely.
TLS Transport Layer Security, SSL protocol Networking The protocol that gives a network connection encryption, integrity and server authentication, underneath HTTPS and most other secure transports.
Token Exchange RFC 8693, Delegation Token protocol OAuth 2.0 & OIDC Trading one token for another with different scope, audience or subject, so a service can call downstream on a user's behalf without reusing the original token.
Token Introspection protocol OAuth 2.0 & OIDC Asking the authorisation server whether a token is currently valid, rather than validating it locally from its signature.
Two-Phase Commit 2PC, XA protocol Distributed Systems A blocking protocol for atomic commit across several resources: a coordinator asks all participants to prepare, then tells them all to commit or abort.
Two-Phase Locking 2PL protocol Transactions & Isolation The concurrency control protocol behind serializable isolation — acquire locks in a growing phase, release only in a shrinking phase, never interleaving the two.
WebSocket protocol Networking A protocol that upgrades an HTTP connection into a persistent, full-duplex channel so the server can push to the client without polling.
WebSockets protocol WebSockets & Realtime A persistent bidirectional connection over HTTP — the right tool for server-initiated updates, and a stateful component in an otherwise stateless architecture.
Workload Identity Federation protocol Pipeline Secrets A pipeline proving what it is with a short-lived signed token from its own platform, so no long-lived cloud credential is ever stored.
XA Transaction protocol Distributed Transactions The X/Open standard interface for two-phase commit across heterogeneous resource managers, still common in enterprise middleware and rarely the right choice for new services.