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

77 terms shown.

Term	Kind	Topic	What it is
Quality Attribute Scenario QA Scenario, Testable NFR	practice	Quality Attributes	A six-part template that turns a vague quality goal into something you can measure and argue about.
Reference Model Reference Architecture	concept	Reference Models	A shared conceptual frame — layers, tiers, viewpoints, capability maps — that gives a conversation vocabulary, and whose limits are frequently forgotten.
Reference Model Tailoring Tailoring Record, Reference Architecture Subsetting	practice	Reference Models	Recording which elements of an adopted reference model you kept, replaced or dropped and why, so a deliberately smaller architecture stays defensible instead of reading as non-compliance.
Replaceability Test Swap Test, Modularity Evidence	practice	Modularity	The evidence-based check for whether a boundary is real - not how many services exist, but whether one implementation could be swapped without touching the others, and whether it ever has been.
Requirements to Constraints	practice	Requirements to Constraints	The translation step where a stated business wish becomes a number that rules designs out.
Reversibility	concept	Trade-off Fundamentals	The property of a decision that determines how much analysis it deserves, since a cheaply reversible choice can be tested rather than debated.
Rule of Three Abstract at the Third Instance, Duplicate Before Abstracting	practice	Evolutionary Architecture	Hard-code the first case, copy for the second, abstract at the third - because only the third instance reveals which parts actually vary.
Second-System Effect	concept	Trade-off Fundamentals	The tendency for a replacement system to accumulate every capability the first one lacked, producing something more complex than either the old system or the problem requires.
Separation of Concerns	concept	Separation of Concerns	Organising a system so that one kind of change touches one place, and so that different concerns can fail and scale independently.
Separation of Concerns	concept	Architecture Fundamentals	Organising a system so each part addresses one concern, and a change to that concern touches one part.
Solution Architecture	concept	Architecture Fundamentals	The design of a specific system that satisfies a specific business problem under a specific set of constraints.
Style versus Pattern	concept	Architecture Styles	The distinction between a system-wide organising structure and a reusable solution to a recurring problem within it.
Technical Constraints	concept	Technical Constraints	The existing estate, skills, licences, contracts and platforms that bound the solution space — inputs to the design, not obstacles to it.
Temporal Coupling	concept	Coupling	A dependency in which one component requires another to be available at the same moment, so the availability of both is required for either to work.
Trade-off Fundamentals	concept	Trade-off Fundamentals	Every architecture is a set of purchases; the skill is naming what was bought, what was sold, and at what exchange rate.
Utility Tree	practice	Quality Attributes	A structured decomposition of quality attributes into concrete, prioritised scenarios, used to focus architectural analysis on what actually matters.
Vendor Lock-In	concept	Technical Constraints	The cost of switching away from a provider, treated as a quantity to be managed deliberately rather than a condition to be avoided absolutely.