Knowledge graphs visually represent relationships between objects stored in Dawiso. They show how business terms, documents, dashboards, systems, people, and other objects are connected to help users understand context at a glance.
Unlike data lineage diagrams, which focus on technical data flows, knowledge diagrams capture semantic and organizational relationships, such as ownership, references, synonyms, or logical links between concepts. This makes them especially useful for navigating business knowledge and understanding how information is structured across your organization.
Use cases
Knowledge diagrams are primarily used in the Business Glossary and Documentation applications, where they help structure business knowledge.
Typical use cases include:
| Use | Description |
|---|---|
| Exploring relationships between business terms | See how terms relate to each other, identify synonyms, parent–child hierarchies, or concept groupings, and navigate complex terminology more easily. |
| Connecting documentation with business context | Visualize which documents, dashboards, or reports reference specific terms, KPIs, or processes, and quickly understand where a concept is used. |
| Clarifying ownership and responsibilities | Display owners, stewards, and related people next to the objects they are responsible for, improving transparency and accountability. |
| Supporting onboarding and knowledge sharing | Provide new users with a clear overview of how concepts, systems, and documents are connected, making it easier to learn how data and terminology fit together. |
By turning metadata relationships into an interactive visual map, knowledge diagrams make complex information easier to navigate, explain, and maintain.
Key features
Ownership visualization
Display owners and responsible persons directly in the diagram, making accountability and stewardship easy to identify.
Color-coded elements
Objects are shown in different colors based on their type or application configuration, helping you distinguish between terms, documents, dashboards, systems, and other object categories at a glance.
Application-specific icons
Each object uses an icon defined by the application configuration, so you can immediately recognize where the object comes from and what it represents.
Space identification
The diagram shows the space where the main object is located, so you always know which domain or area of the catalog you are working in.
Relation groups
When an object has many same-type, same-direction relations, the diagram collapses the extra ones into one grouped node labeled N more objects. This keeps densely connected objects readable instead of surrounded by hundreds of nodes.
Grouping applies at every level of an expansion, not just the starting object. Each densely connected object added along the way gets its own grouped nodes. Even a wide expansion stays readable, instead of drawing the whole surrounding neighborhood at once.
Expanding a group
- Double-click the grouped node to open its list of objects.
- The list loads page by page and can be filtered by object name or object type.
- Select the objects you want, then confirm. They’re added to the diagram as regular nodes, and the group’s remaining count drops accordingly.
- To add most of a group at once, select every object the current filter matches, then uncheck the ones you don’t want.
Once every object in the group is on the canvas, the grouped node disappears.
Limits and filtering
- An expansion reaches at most ten levels from the starting object. Objects on that last level don’t get their own grouped nodes, even if they have further relations — expand from one of them to continue. Administrators can change this limit.
- Only relation types the metamodel draws on the canvas count toward a group. A relation type with no line display configured doesn’t appear as a group and isn’t counted.
- Grouped nodes follow the object type filter in the diagram’s filter panel — changing the filter recalculates each group’s count and object list.