Architecture Practices

Architecture practices are named bundles of modeling choices, constraints, and implementation habits that address recurring system-engineering problems.

In the Cohesive System Model, these practices are not primitives. They are ways of arranging domain semantics, system graph, operational concerns, and realization substrate to solve particular problems.

Cohesive provides language for expressing the problem each practice addresses, and a compiler-like discipline for projecting that expression into structures, operations, and realizations while preserving meaning. See system language and realization for the broader vision.

For each practice, ask:

• What system-engineering problem is it trying to solve?
• Which Cohesive concepts express that problem directly?
• Which boundaries, observers, entities, transitions, flows, and realizations does it introduce or constrain?
• Which guarantees does it require, and at which boundary?
• Which failure modes occur when the practice is treated as a slogan rather than a model?

Some well-known patterns & practices:

• Domain-Driven Design
• Ports and Adapters
• Clean Architecture
• Modular Monolith
• Microservices
• Event-Driven Architecture
• Asynchronous Interaction Design
• CQRS as Architecture Practice
• Event Sourcing as Architecture Practice
• Orchestration and Choreography
• Process Managers
• Sagas
• Durable Execution
• Actor Model
• Anti-Corruption Layer
• Transactional Outbox
• Transactional Inbox
• Weak Isolation Patterns
• CRDTs as Architecture Practice
• Data Mesh

Related concepts: system language and realization, categorical principles, process theories, stuff structure property, boundaries, observer, entity, transition, persistence, durability, reconstitution, effects, commit boundaries, realization.