Pattern Taxonomy

Table of Contents

A taxonomy of patterns. These design patterns are from a practical tooling angle. The intent is for this post to be a quick reference to trade-off-balancing and the tooling that can be considered for common architecture/system design needs.

How to Use This Reference #

Patterns are prioritised for interview prep:

Priority	Meaning	Count
🔴 P0	Core fundamentals	~25
🟠 P1	Likely to appear or be touched on	~35
🟡 P2	Enrichment, deepens adjacent patterns	~10

Each pattern links to relevant DDIA 2e chapters where applicable. Cross-references between patterns are marked with see also links.

Sections #

Section	Focus
Fundamental Concepts	Axioms underpinning all distributed systems
Encoding & Data Formats	Serialisation, protocols, transport
Communication & API Design	Service boundaries, messaging, integration
Data Storage & Retrieval	Models, indexes, durability, event sourcing
Scaling & Performance	Replication, sharding, caching, load
Reliability, Consistency & Synchronisation	CAP, consensus, transactions, resilience
Observability	Logs, metrics, traces
Deployment & Evolution	Rollout strategies, migrations, feature flags
Domain-Specific Patterns	Payments, real-time, multi-tenancy