The virulence factor database (VFDB) has been a comprehensive resource for bacterial virulence factors (VFs) since its inception in 2004. Over the past decade, VFDB has evolved to address the challenges posed by the exponential growth of biological data, particularly in the context of big data analysis. The authors have recently made significant improvements to the dataset, including the creation of two hierarchical datasets: a core dataset of experimentally verified VFs and a full dataset including all known and predicted VFs. They have also refined the gene annotation of the core dataset using controlled vocabularies to enhance data quality and usability. These enhancements aim to facilitate the bioinformatic mining of the growing data on bacterial VFs. Additionally, VFDB has expanded its coverage to include six new bacterial pathogens and introduced a new JavaScript-rich web interface for improved user experience. The improvements in data quality and usability are crucial for advancing research in bacterial pathogenesis and developing new approaches to combat or prevent diseases.The virulence factor database (VFDB) has been a comprehensive resource for bacterial virulence factors (VFs) since its inception in 2004. Over the past decade, VFDB has evolved to address the challenges posed by the exponential growth of biological data, particularly in the context of big data analysis. The authors have recently made significant improvements to the dataset, including the creation of two hierarchical datasets: a core dataset of experimentally verified VFs and a full dataset including all known and predicted VFs. They have also refined the gene annotation of the core dataset using controlled vocabularies to enhance data quality and usability. These enhancements aim to facilitate the bioinformatic mining of the growing data on bacterial VFs. Additionally, VFDB has expanded its coverage to include six new bacterial pathogens and introduced a new JavaScript-rich web interface for improved user experience. The improvements in data quality and usability are crucial for advancing research in bacterial pathogenesis and developing new approaches to combat or prevent diseases.