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Notion Databases Just Got a Major Update
Notion has introduced one of the biggest changes to its database architecture in years: data sources.
This new organizational layer sits between databases and pages, changing how databases are structured, viewed, and connected.
The update impacts both how you build inside Notion and how third-party tools interact with your workspace via the API.
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Database Changes & New Date Sources
With the update, instead of being limited to one set of properties per database, you can now create multiple data sources, each with its own independent property setup.
This means you can organize different workflows under a single database — reducing clutter in your workspace — while still keeping each set of properties neatly separated.
Here are the main changes:
- New Hierarchy: Databases can now contain multiple data sources, each with its own distinct set of properties. These data sources live inside the same database container but remain fully independent from one another.
- Data Source Management: Add, rename, and assign icons to data sources to organize your databases in a new way.
- Linked Data Sources: You can now create views that display data from other databases or data sources directly inside a database. Previously, this was only possible using a linked view block on a separate page.
- Move Across Databases: Data sources can be moved freely from one database to another.
- Less Clutter: Workflow setups that require multiple different sets of properties can now be managed within one database instead of several separate ones.
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Current Limitations & Bottlenecks
While this new system opens up more flexibility by introducing one more organizational layer, it doesn’t come without limitations.
Here’s what I discovered during testing:
- No Cross-View Properties: Properties from different data sources can’t be shown together in the same view, since the underlying data sources are still completely separate from each other. Connecting them still requires a relation property.
- Cluttered Views: All views for all data sources live under one main database view, which can become messy quickly.
- No Duplication Option: Individual data sources can’t be duplicated right now, only whole databases with all sources.
- Wiki Support Missing: Wikis currently don’t support multiple data sources.
- API Changes: Integrations must update to use data source IDs instead of database IDs. Adding new sources to existing integrated databases may break workflows until tools catch up and update to the latest Notion API version.
Check out my detailed walkthrough video on YouTube and make sure to share your opinion in the comments section!
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