Terminology

454 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 areas454 Architecture Fundamentals16 Distributed Systems73 Data Architecture71 Cloud Architecture55 Networking13 API & Integration Architecture17 Reliability & Resilience16 Observability14 Performance & Capacity Engineering13 Security Architecture50 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 concept166 practice107 pattern93 case-study26 tool26 protocol22 metric14

3 terms shown.

Term	Kind	Topic	What it is
Compensating Transaction	pattern	Sagas & Compensation	A business operation that semantically undoes a previously committed step — not a rollback, because the original effect was visible and may not be fully reversible.
Pivot Transaction	concept	Sagas & Compensation	The step in a saga after which the transaction can no longer be cancelled — everything before it is compensatable, everything after it is retriable until it succeeds.
Saga Orchestrator	pattern	Sagas & Compensation	A component that explicitly drives a saga's steps and compensations, holding the flow in one place rather than distributing it across event subscriptions.