Default or Repository Relations

The DNE allows you to build maps that are dedicated to particular topics - whatever topics you think are important enough to warrant their own maps. However, you have a lot of information that is not going to end up on one of these maps, or that will eventually, but not yet. Default or repository mode lets you create exactly the same links between your knowledge, without committing you to a full-scale object model. Just link NEs together to reflect the relations between them.

If you are using the DNE to manage your knowledge, you may find that you rely almost always on default mode. It offers nearly all the advantages of building an object model, including fields and all associations. There are only two important limitations to default mode:

These advantages are important if you are spending time on a particular task, and you may wish to build a model specifically for that task. However, they are probably not important advantages in managing knowledge day to day. For your day-to-day file and knowledge management needs, default-mode knowledge maps should provide more functionality than you need.