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

5 terms shown.

Term	Kind	Topic	What it is
GitHub 2018: 43 Seconds of Partition, 24 Hours of Recovery GitHub October 2018 Incident	case-study	Leader Election	A 43-second network partition triggered an automated cross-region database failover, and reconciling the resulting divergence took over 24 hours.
Leader Election in Practice Coordinator Election, Primary Election	pattern	Leader Election	Selecting one node to coordinate, why majority quorum is non-negotiable, and why fencing at the resource is what actually prevents corruption.
Progress-Based Liveness Are-You-Making-Progress Check, Beyond Heartbeats	practice	Leader Election	Detecting a leader or worker that is alive but not advancing, by checking whether work is progressing rather than whether the process responds.
Split Brain	concept	Leader Election	A partition in which two subsets of a cluster each believe they are authoritative, accepting conflicting writes that cannot afterwards be reconciled.
Split Vote	concept	Leader Election	An election in which no candidate obtains a majority, so the term ends with no leader and the process must repeat.