Terminology

384 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 areas384 Architecture Fundamentals16 Distributed Systems73 Data Architecture71 Cloud Architecture17 Networking13 API & Integration Architecture17 Reliability & Resilience16 Observability14 Performance & Capacity Engineering13 Security Architecture18 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 concept136 practice90 pattern81 case-study26 protocol19 tool19 metric13

16 terms shown.

Term	Kind	Topic	What it is
Abstraction	concept	Architecture Fundamentals	Exposing what a component does while hiding how it does it, so callers depend on the contract rather than the mechanism.
Architectural Driver	concept	Architecture Fundamentals	The small subset of requirements and constraints that actually shape the structure of the system.
Architecture Principle	practice	Architecture Fundamentals	A durable, agreed rule that constrains design decisions in advance, stated with its rationale and its implications.
Architecture Style	concept	Architecture Fundamentals	A named, coarse-grained way of organising a whole system, as distinct from a pattern that solves one recurring problem inside it.
Cohesion	concept	Architecture Fundamentals	The degree to which everything inside one component belongs together and changes for the same reason.
Conway's Law	concept	Architecture Fundamentals	Systems tend to mirror the communication structure of the organisation that builds them.
Coupling	concept	Architecture Fundamentals	The degree to which one component must know about, or change alongside, another.
Encapsulation	concept	Architecture Fundamentals	Keeping a component's state private, so it can only be changed through operations that maintain its invariants.
Evolutionary Architecture	practice	Architecture Fundamentals	Designing for guided, incremental change rather than trying to get the structure right once, up front.
Fitness Function	practice	Architecture Fundamentals	An automated check that an architectural characteristic still holds, run continuously rather than reviewed occasionally.
Instagram's Early Scaling	case-study	Architecture Fundamentals	Instagram reached tens of millions of users on Django and PostgreSQL with a handful of engineers, by deliberately choosing boring technology and doing the simple thing first.
Modularity	concept	Architecture Fundamentals	The degree to which a system is composed of parts that can be understood, changed and replaced independently.
Non-Functional Requirement NFR, Quality Attribute	concept	Architecture Fundamentals	A requirement about how well the system must behave rather than what it must do — latency, availability, throughput, security, cost.
Quality Attribute Scenario QAS	practice	Architecture Fundamentals	A structured, testable statement of a non-functional requirement: source, stimulus, environment, artefact, response, response measure.
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.