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Wow.  That is an awful lot of attitude  towards an audience who you are asking to give their time for FREE to help you evaluate your software...the fact that data merge is not included in the initial version of Publisher suggests that you may not really appreciate the needs of your market.

Data merging like a boss:
Merge from folders / files Merge csv, excel etc files Merge local databases (like Filemaker etc) Merge Google Sheets / Docs Merge SQL--databases (wordpress, woocommece.. etc)  

mate, my wife is a software architect so I do know what is involved. and personally I don't care because I have full licenced Adobe products and will continue to use them until its implemented but clearly I am not the only designer asking for this feature, if you don't want to listen to your potential customers that is your prerogative.

Wow.  That is an awful lot of attitude  towards an audience who you are asking to give their time for FREE to help you evaluate your software...the fact that data merge is not included in the initial version of Publisher suggests that you may not really appreciate the needs of your market.

I don't see the need for data merge. - What's the problem with manually cutting and pasting half a dozen fields from a database into four or five hundred individual documents! 
(Which is what I need to do for personalised menus for a staff party.) I've got nothing better to do than sit typing for several hours, rather than just hitting a few buttons!
But, seriously, this really is an essential feature for a lot of people, for many projects. PLEASE implement it sooner rather than later.

Data Merge, as InDesign does it at least, is utter rubbish. If you want to implement some sort of batch data import & formatting then look into InDesign's XML importer and Structure panel instead. It's more complicated but infinitely better. And Affinity can "easily" one-up Adobe on this by simply supporting XML and also JSON import. JSON is being used a lot more than XML these days (for the best and for the worse), so supporting it is a big competitive advantage.

+1 BIG TIME for data merge.  Frankly, without it, there is really no reason to move to an affinity publisher platform from my current workflow.  
To date, Designer and Photo have served my needs very well.  I started with Designer and after a few weeks use there, Photo was happily purchased.  If Publisher debuts without data merge, I will just have to wait patiently until the feature is added; Publisher would will not be an automatic purchase.
I truly believe that you will be shooting yourself in your foot if you launch a software application targeting professionals and advanced hobbyists/amateurs without a top-notch, innovative, and user-friendly data merge capability.  In the circles I create, this feature alone could set you apart and drive demand from hundreds of users to your software.
 
Best of luck with your project.
Cheers

+1 BIG TIME for data merge.  Frankly, without it, there is really no reason to move to an affinity publisher platform from my current workflow.  
To date, Designer and Photo have served my needs very well.  I started with Designer and after a few weeks use there, Photo was happily purchased.  If Publisher debuts without data merge, I will just have to wait patiently until the feature is added; Publisher would will not be an automatic purchase.
I truly believe that you will be shooting yourself in your foot if you launch a software application targeting professionals and advanced hobbyists/amateurs without a top-notch, innovative, and user-friendly data merge capability.  In the circles I create, this feature alone could set you apart and drive demand from hundreds of users to your software.
 
Best of luck with your project.
Cheers

+1 BIG TIME for data merge.  Frankly, without it, there is really no reason to move to an affinity publisher platform from my current workflow.  
To date, Designer and Photo have served my needs very well.  I started with Designer and after a few weeks use there, Photo was happily purchased.  If Publisher debuts without data merge, I will just have to wait patiently until the feature is added; Publisher would will not be an automatic purchase.
I truly believe that you will be shooting yourself in your foot if you launch a software application targeting professionals and advanced hobbyists/amateurs without a top-notch, innovative, and user-friendly data merge capability.  In the circles I create, this feature alone could set you apart and drive demand from hundreds of users to your software.
 
Best of luck with your project.
Cheers