Basic concepts and terminology

There are many fundamental concepts and terms that are widely used in system design. This list is comprehensive and I will continue to update and add new items as necessary.

1. Scalability: The ability to handle increasing workload
2. High availability: designing a system to minimize downtime and ensure that it is always available to users.
3. Auto-scaling: designing a system to automatically adjust the amount of resources it uses based on the workload.
4. Redundancy: designing a system with extra capacity to ensure that it can continue functioning in case of a failure.
5. Failover: designing a system to automatically switch to a backup component in case of a failure.
6. Modularity: Dividing the system into smaller independent components
7. Abstraction: Hiding details of the system and presenting necessary information
8. Encapsulation: Hiding internal details and exposing only public interface
9. Coupling: Interdependence between components or modules
10. Cohesion: How elements within a component or module work together
11. Data Flow: Flow of data between components or modules
12. Performance: Efficiency and effectiveness of a system
13. Latency: Time delay between system response and request
14. Throughput: Amount of work a system can handle over a period of time
15. Load balancing: distributing workload evenly across the system to ensure that no single component is overworked.
16. Concurrency: ability to handle multiple tasks simultaneously
17. Fault Tolerance: ability of a system to continue functioning in case of failure
18. Security: ability of a system to protect data and resources
19. Caching: storing frequently accessed data for fast retrieval
20. Indexing: organizing data for fast search and retrieval
21. Replication: creating multiple copies of data for availability and fault tolerance.
22. Partitioning: dividing a system into smaller units for better management and scalability.
23. Architecture: the overall structure and organization of a system
24. Design Patterns: reusable solutions to common design problems
25. Service-oriented architecture (SOA): a design approach that focuses on building services that can be reused
26. Microservices: a design approach that focuses on building small, independent services that can be developed and deployed separately
27. Event-driven architecture (EDA): a design approach that focuses on processing and reacting to events
28. Object-oriented design (OOD): a design approach that focuses on creating objects and classes to represent real-world entities
29. Function-oriented design (FOD): a design approach that focuses on designing functions and procedures
30. Data-oriented design (DOD): a design approach that focuses on designing data structures and algorithms
31. Capacity Planning: determining the appropriate amount of resources needed to handle a given workload
32. Resource Allocation: the process of assigning resources to different tasks or processes
33. Stateless: a design approach that does not retain information about previous requests
34. Stateful: a design approach that retains information about previous requests
35. Synchronous: a design approach that requires the completion of a task before moving on to the next one
36. Asynchronous: a design approach that allows tasks to be performed concurrently
37. Client-Server: a design approach that separates the client and server components of a system
38. Peer-to-Peer: a design approach that allows nodes in a network to communicate directly with each other
39. Horizontal Scaling: adding more resources to a system to handle an increase in workload
40. Vertical Scaling: adding more powerful resources to a system to handle an increase in workload
41. Distributed Systems: systems that run on multiple devices or locations
42. Cloud Computing: the use of remote servers over the internet to store, manage, and process data.
43. API (Application Programming Interface): a set of protocols, routines, and tools for building software and applications
44. Protocol: a set of rules and standards for communication between systems
45. Session: a period of time during which a user interacts with a system
46. Authentication: the process of verifying the identity of a user or system
47. Authorization: the process of granting or denying access to a system's resources
48. Monitoring: the process of tracking and analyzing the performance of a system.
49. Backup and disaster recovery: designing a system to ensure that data can be recovered in case of a failure.
50. Optimization: designing a system to minimize resource usage and improve performance.
51. Refactoring: redesigning a system to improve its structure and organization without changing its functionality.
52. Reusability: designing a system to make it easy to reuse components in other systems.
53. Test-driven development: designing a system by writing tests for its functionality before writing the actual code.