Sudden realization: the new Properties feature in #Obsidian may let me do more Airtable-y things (eg, tab/type completion for fields/values) than I currently get by using #Dataview inline-fields.
Until now I only ever used the properties for aliases, and kept it set to 'Source' view as it's faster to bang them out that way.
But assuming Dataview can query properties as well as it queries its own fields (99% sure), it seems like a no-brainer. Especially as I bet the devs will keep improving.