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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

11 terms shown.

Term Kind Topic What it is
Airbnb's Service-Oriented Migration case-study Legacy Modernization Airbnb decomposed a large Rails monolith by first extracting a unified data-access layer, so that services were built on owned data rather than on shared database tables.
Anti-Corruption Layer ACL pattern Legacy Modernization A translation layer that converts a legacy or external system's model into your own, so its concepts do not leak into your domain.
Dual Write pattern Data Migration Strategies Writing the same change to both the old and new stores during a migration, and the reconciliation that makes it trustworthy.
eBay's Architectural Generations case-study Legacy Modernization eBay rewrote its core platform several times across its first decade, each time because the previous generation had hit a limit that could not be tuned away.
Feature Parity Trap concept Rebuild vs Re-architect The expectation that a replacement system must match every behaviour of the old one before it can be adopted, which is what makes rewrites never finish.
Parallel Run practice Legacy Modernization Running the old and new systems side by side on the same inputs and comparing outputs, before the new one is trusted.
Re-architect vs Rebuild concept Legacy Modernization Restructuring an existing system incrementally versus writing a replacement from scratch — and the strong evidence that incremental wins.
Replatform Lift and Reshape practice Legacy Modernization Migrating an application largely as-is while making targeted changes to exploit the target platform — usually the best return per unit of effort.
Six Rs of Migration 6 Rs, Migration Strategies concept Legacy Modernization The standard menu of options for each application in a migration — rehost, replatform, refactor, repurchase, retire, retain.
Strangler Facade pattern Strangler Fig The routing layer in front of a legacy system that decides, per capability, whether a request goes to the old implementation or the new one.
Zero-Downtime Migration Expand and Contract, Parallel Change pattern Legacy Modernization Changing a schema or system while it stays in service, by adding the new alongside the old, migrating, then removing the old.