Improving Relationships in Relationship Tables

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.

Binder, Zachary. XML.org (2008). Articles>Information Design>XML>DITA