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

69 terms shown.

Term	Kind	Topic	What it is
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.
Transaction Log Stream	concept	CDC to Stream	Change events derived from a database's write-ahead log — faithful to the table's mutations and to its internal model rather than to the business's.
Unbounded Dataset	concept	Streaming & Real-Time Data	Input with no known end, which removes the option of waiting for completeness and forces every aggregate to be provisional.
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…
Watermark Event-Time Progress, Completeness Estimate, Lateness Boundary	concept	Watermarks & Late Data	A heuristic assertion that no further events earlier than a given event time are expected, which is how a stream processor decides when a window is complete - and therefore where the correctness-versus-promptn…
Watermark	concept	Watermarks & Late Data	The stream processor's assertion that no further events older than a given event time are expected, which is what allows a window to close.
Watermark Lag	metric	Watermarks & Late Data	How far behind the newest event a watermark is held, which trades result latency against how much late data is included.
Window Overlap Factor Hop Multiplier, Sliding Window Fan-Out	metric	Windowing	The ratio of a sliding window's size to its advance - the number of windows each record belongs to, and therefore the multiplier on state, output volume and any naive sum taken downstream.
Windowing Strategy	concept	Windowing	The choice of how a continuous stream is divided into finite groups for aggregation, which determines both the meaning of the result and the state it requires.