System Design Glossary
Short definitions for terms used in system design pages. For operational depth, follow the links in each topic page.
| Abbreviation | Full Form |
|---|---|
| API | Application Programming Interface |
| CAP | Consistency, Availability, Partition tolerance |
| CDN | Content Delivery Network |
| DAU | Daily Active Users |
| DB | Database |
| FK | Foreign Key |
| GraphQL | Graph Query Language |
| gRPC | gRPC Remote Procedure Call |
| ID | Identifier |
| JSON | JavaScript Object Notation |
| LRU | Least Recently Used |
| NoSQL | Not Only SQL |
| p99 | 99th percentile (latency) |
| PACELC | If Partitioned: choose Availability or Consistency; Else: choose Latency or Consistency |
| QPS | Queries Per Second |
| RED | Rate, Errors, Duration |
| Redis | Remote Dictionary Server |
| REST | Representational State Transfer |
| SLA | Service Level Agreement |
| SQL | Structured Query Language |
| TTL | Time To Live |
| USE | Utilization, Saturation, Errors |
| 2PC | Two-Phase Commit |