Improving Relationships in Relationship Tables
http://dita.xml.org/improving-relationships-relationship-tables

Binder, Zachary
XML.org
2008

Abstract:

While topic relationships can be stored in the topics themselves, as products evolve and user interfaces change, a topic that was required for release 1.0 of a product may no longer be needed in release 2.3. If related topics are maintained at the topic level, removing a topic that is no longer part of the system may involve modifying the related topics of a dozen different DITA files.