Silent Data Corruption

Kind: anti-pattern

Layer: Enforcement Core

Record: architecture:silent-data-corruption

Severity: discouraged

Scope: contract_compatibility, correctness_verification

Formed by: Accept, transform, or persist invalid data without validation, checksums, invariants, reconciliation, or audit.

Canonical: Ontology

A defect in which invalid data is accepted, transformed or stored without any check noticing.

Listed in Architecture principles, after Missing Backpressure and before Lost Update.

Refactored by

• Validate at the Boundary
• Invariant Check
• Reconciliation Job
• Data Change Audit

Severity

• discouraged

Category

• Anti-patterns

Force

• Contract compatibility
• Correctness verification

Negated by

• Fail Fast

Linked from

• Debt and leverage
• Anti-patterns
• Error Handling / Resilience
• Core Vocabulary
• Correctness / Determinism / Verification
• Observability / Auditability / Traceability
• Transactions / State / Concurrency
• Failure shapes
• Severity levels
• The forces