What I’ve always appreciated in Obsidian is how it encourages thinking through writing. Its true strength lies in connecting ideas, not in managing highly structured and repetitive databases. I believe that’s what makes it so unique compared to other note-taking tools.
Lately though, I’ve been exploring how plugins like Dataview or Bases can surface patterns in structured metadata. It’s powerful, but I try to keep in mind that Obsidian should remain a tool for insight and thought, not a productivity black hole where we spend more time designing schemas than actually writing.
Still, with the amount of notes I’ve accumulated and the consistency of my metadata, I’m reaching a point where I would benefit from external tools to analyze or even automate based on that data.
A good example is geographic visualization. I often want to view my notes on a map. Existing plugins like Mapview or Leaflet are great for simple uses, but very limited compared to what GIS software like QGIS can do. And since QGIS and other advanced tools rely heavily on SQL databases, it seems natural to ask: Why not sync all my metadata to an external database like PostgreSQL?
Doing so wouldn’t just improve how I visualize or analyze my notes. It would also open the door to automating the metadata itself using APIs, which is something I’d find extremely useful. For example, being able to update fields or trigger external workflows based on the content of my notes.
So here’s my question:
Is there currently a way to efficiently sync all note metadata to an external database? And if not, why has no one done this yet?
The only relevant project I found is this old archived plugin: https://github.com/clouedoc/postgresql-obsidian
But with the arrival of the Bases plugin and the future Base API, I’m wondering whether this could finally become possible.
Would love to hear your thoughts if you’ve explored this path or if you think it aligns (or conflicts) with the spirit of Obsidian.
Define system commands that you want to execute via command palette, hotkeys, URI links or automated events. E.g. open external applications or perform automated file modifications.
My plugin allows you to interact with the data in Obsidian using SQL as a language. You can use the codeblock to also export to a separate file and you can format and render that data as CSV, JSON, etc and to a seperate file which you can promatically work on.
This page shows an example of how the data is outputted to a seperate file.