Terminology

2205 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 areas2205 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 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 concept794 practice734 pattern368 metric125 case-study77 tool62 protocol45

6 terms shown.

Term	Kind	Topic	What it is
Distributed Locks in Practice Lease, Mutual Exclusion	pattern	Distributed Locking	Why lease-based locking is unsafe without fencing, when locks are unavailable entirely, and the partitioning alternative that removes the problem.
Fencing Token	pattern	Distributed Locking	A monotonically increasing number issued with a lock, checked by the resource, so a holder whose lease expired cannot act on stale authority.
Lease	concept	Distributed Locking	A lock with an expiry, granting exclusive rights for a bounded time so that a crashed holder cannot block the system forever.
Lock Lease Expiry	concept	Distributed Locking	The timeout on a distributed lock that prevents a crashed holder deadlocking the system — and the source of the pattern's hardest failure mode.
Optimistic Concurrency Control OCC, Compare-and-Set	pattern	Distributed Locking	Allowing concurrent work without locks and detecting conflict at write time by checking that the underlying version has not changed.
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.