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

5 terms shown.

Term	Kind	Topic	What it is
Certificate Chain Chain of Trust	concept	TLS & Certificates	The sequence from a server's certificate through one or more intermediate CAs to a root the client already trusts.
Certificate Lifecycle Management	practice	TLS & Certificates	Issuing, deploying, monitoring and renewing certificates automatically, because manual tracking reliably produces outages.
Mutual TLS mTLS, Client Certificate Authentication	protocol	TLS & Certificates	TLS in which both ends present certificates, so the server authenticates the client cryptographically rather than by a shared secret.
Server Name Indication SNI, TLS Host Extension	protocol	TLS & Certificates	The cleartext hostname a client sends in its first TLS message, letting one address serve many certificates and letting a proxy route a session before it decrypts anything.
Trust Boundary Classification Where mTLS Is Required, Encryption Scope	practice	TLS & Certificates	Writing down which network segments count as trust boundaries, so that mutual TLS is applied where it changes the security posture rather than uniformly or by intuition.