Access databases in formula fields

Ideas & Features
1

It is sometimes helpful to be able to access other databases (or even the entity’s own database) in formula fields. This has come up a bunch of times over time, but latest instance was when I wanted to find the previous and next items in a series of entities (daily notes). However, I am not able to reference the parent database to filter and sort based on the current entity.

[Daily Notes].Filter(Date > [This Daily Note].Date)
  .Sort(Date)
  .First()

I have noticed that you are able to access other databases to lookup information in automation formulas.

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2

I think this is unlikely to happen any time soon for the following reason: any formula which refers to an entire database will need recalculating any time an entity is created/update/deleted within that database.
And this recalculation needs to occur for every entity in the database where the formula lives.

Overall, the chance of the formula engine getting overwhelmed is too high.

Such formulas are allowed in automations because they only need to be calculated once (when the automation runs).

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