Obsidian Dataview: Turn Obsidian Vault into a database you can query from

Dataview is incredible. Being able to query plain text notes and their metadata has been transformative for my workflow. It has allowed me to move virtually all my thought processing work into Obsidian. I am constantly amazed by how performant Dataview is.<p>I sometimes wonder if learning how to use Dataview inside of Obsidian is too technical to get mass adoption, compared to WYSIWYG tools like Notion that let you build databases with nice UI filtering. But the performance of Dataview is so much better, and the control you have over queries so much more granular, that it’s worth the learning curve. The Obsidian community is also incredibly good at helping new users learn, which makes me feel optimistic.<p>To help make things a bit more user-friendly I have been building an Obsidian theme called Minimal[1] which allows you to take Dataview tables and display them in a card layout[2]. I really enjoy that layout for certain types of information, while having all the underlying power of Dataview.<p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;kepano&#x2F;obsidian-minimal" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;kepano&#x2F;obsidian-minimal</a><p>[2]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;minimal.guide&#x2F;Block+types&#x2F;Cards" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;minimal.guide&#x2F;Block+types&#x2F;Cards</a>

Hierarchical notetakers&#x2F;outliners are becoming a new data structure for end users, specialized in knowledge management. A kind of generalized, expandable spreadsheet.<p>I expect these tools to include more and more tools for automation based on a reactive programming style (more suited to non-programmers), expanding its function as a warehouse of ideas into a more active role for user-created applications. The NOCODE camp is growing from its VB6-like visual-style roots into environments that look more like an IDE in the style of the browser&#x27;s &quot;Inspect&quot; window.<p>The key development that I miss is that of <i>reifying</i> query results, allowing the user to use the data generated by a search as an object in itself. I even have a name for that reified object - a <i>wit</i> would be a collection of data compiled with a common criteria (representing a <i>minimum unit of meaning</i>, is a wordplay on <i>bit</i> being the minimum unit of knowledge), similar to a spreadsheet range. When tools like Obsidian or Logseq start allowing the user to use query results as first-class data, I predict that we will see a revolution in end-user process automation.

Whoa, very weird to see my plugin hit HN! Dataview was initially borne as &quot;Notion tables for Obsidian&quot;, but quickly became a way to do flexible data annotation + querying after I realized how powerful metadata can be. Viewing your notes as &quot;text + data that can easily be accessed&quot; can really alter how you think about note taking and knowledge management.<p>There is a fair bit left to do for the plugin (export to raw Markdown, section-level metadata), but I hope you find it useful!

If you like this idea, but prefer something more self-contained, Tiddlywiki is an excellent option, as it runs in-browser from a single HTML file. Its core approach is to treat notes as a queryable database, and its markup supports dynamic content based on queries of that DB. Because its UI is constructed from the same DB, the same techniques that allow you to construct a dynamic view from the DB also allow you to construct custom UIs for that view, including changing properties&#x2F;attributes of items in the DB.<p>That&#x27;s all pretty abstract. A simple example: it allows you to construct a tabbed view of several todo lists based on tags and fields and adjust priority and status from that single UI.<p>It&#x27;s been available for many years, but has never been trendy, despite its unique design and strengths. I recommend giving it a spin!

Logseq allows query via datomic: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;discuss.logseq.com&#x2F;t&#x2F;advanced-queries-and-the-database-documentation&#x2F;1542" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;discuss.logseq.com&#x2F;t&#x2F;advanced-queries-and-the-databa...</a>

Obsidian is amazing. Dataview is transformative, but it&#x27;s not alone; the Excalidraw plugin is also a game-changer in its own right, enabling notes in drawings and drawings in notes... just incredibly powerful for more visually-oriented users.

Just a shameless suggestion: if anyone is concerned about the security implications of using the Obsidian Sync paid addon, I’ve been having good results with Syncthing instead. It supports peer-to-peer sync and is FOSS.

I&#x27;ve been using it for a few months and it&#x27;s pretty cool. It allows me to do stuff like:<p>* list all unfinished tasks grouped by some custom metadata ( project, etc.)<p>* have note templates which contains a dynamic query for the history of the same type of note for historical context<p>* use it in conjunction with Obsidian charts to make custom charts ( e.g. number of meetings with tag&#x2F;metadata&#x2F;mention of X)

So many great features, but all these systems are missing the one true feature I really need, Link types. I see that Dataview gives some ability to have them, but it requires a very specific format that is pretty distinct from how the notes would be taken.

Obsidian is quickly shaping up to be the best thing ever to happen to note taking in a long time. I don&#x27;t know how I could live without it!<p>I wish it were FOSS, or had a roadmap to become FOSS once the whole world already owns a licensed copy, like everyone should, but even though I&#x27;m normally a major FOSS enthusiast, I&#x27;m just happy this software exists at all, in any form.<p>I will definitely be making use of this dataview extension!

Honestly this is one of the handful of plugins I hate trying to live without.<p>Tag wrangler is the other.

Before Obsidian there was ConntextedText [1]. Few people knew it even back then, but it is quite powerful, packed with common wiki features like linking, attributes, querying (also display results as a table), transclusion, page graph visualisation, python integration, etc.<p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.connectedtext.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.connectedtext.com&#x2F;</a>

Dataview is pretty nice, but last time I played with it, I missed a bit interactivity. By which I mean working with the results on the fly, like sorting them inplace, selecting individual entries and move them to new results. Is this possible now, or in progress?

is this the agile version of note taking? Making a bunch of tools and unproductive ceremonies around simple note taking?

Thats a really cool idea

Next we’ll do email!