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

4 terms shown.

Term	Kind	Topic	What it is
Hybrid Retrieval Dense + Sparse Retrieval, BM25 + Vector	pattern	RAG Architecture	Running lexical keyword search and dense vector search together and fusing the results, because each fails where the other succeeds.
Retrieval Grounding Grounded Generation	concept	RAG Architecture	Constraining a model's answer to content retrieved from an authoritative corpus, with citations and an abstention path - so that output quality becomes a retrieval problem rather than a model problem.
Retrieval Pipeline Stages	pattern	RAG Architecture	The stages that turn a user question into grounded context — query processing, retrieval, reranking and assembly — each independently tunable.
Retrieval-Generation Separation Evaluate Retrieval Independently, Two-Stage Debugging	practice	RAG Architecture	Measuring whether the correct passage was retrieved, separately from whether the answer was correct - the single diagnostic that turns unfalsifiable RAG debugging into a specific measurable defect.