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

6 terms shown.

Term	Kind	Topic	What it is
Backfill	practice	Batch Orchestration	Reprocessing historical periods through a pipeline after fixing a defect or adding a field, at a scale the pipeline was not sized for.
Batch Orchestration Workflow Orchestration, DAG Scheduling	concept	Batch Orchestration	Running interdependent data jobs in the right order with retries, backfills and failure handling, expressed as a dependency graph rather than a schedule.
DAG Dependency	concept	Batch Orchestration	The declared edge stating that one task must not start until another has succeeded, and the difference between that and merely running later.
Logical Date Partitioning Execution Date, Idempotent Reprocessing	practice	Batch Orchestration	Making every batch task a pure function of a logical date, so that any run can be repeated safely and a backfill is a range of independent executions.
Wall-Clock Schedule Hazard Local-Time Trigger Hazard, DST Schedule Ambiguity	concept	Batch Orchestration	The class of batch faults caused by triggering work on a civil clock that repeats, skips or shifts, producing duplicate or missing runs that no job reports as an error.
Zombie Task Orphaned Task, Heartbeat-Expired Task	concept	Batch Orchestration	A task whose worker has stopped reporting to the scheduler but whose process may still be running and writing, so the orchestrator retries work that has not actually stopped.