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

6 terms shown.

Term	Kind	Topic	What it is
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.
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.
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.
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.