The article introduces VFDB 2019, a comprehensive platform for deciphering bacterial pathogenesis through virulence factor (VF) analysis. VFDB provides an online warehouse and interactive web interface to facilitate the characterization of pathogenomic compositions. The platform includes an integrated and automatic pipeline, VFAnalyzer, which systematically identifies known and potential VFs in complete or draft bacterial genomes. VFAnalyzer constructs orthologous groups, conducts iterative sequence similarity searches, and refines data based on gene clusters to achieve high specificity and sensitivity. The platform also features an optimized interactive web interface for easy online analysis. The article highlights the importance of comprehensive VF characterization in understanding and controlling infectious diseases, especially in the context of emerging pathogens. Additionally, it discusses the limitations and future improvements of the platform, emphasizing the need for further research in predicting novel VFs.The article introduces VFDB 2019, a comprehensive platform for deciphering bacterial pathogenesis through virulence factor (VF) analysis. VFDB provides an online warehouse and interactive web interface to facilitate the characterization of pathogenomic compositions. The platform includes an integrated and automatic pipeline, VFAnalyzer, which systematically identifies known and potential VFs in complete or draft bacterial genomes. VFAnalyzer constructs orthologous groups, conducts iterative sequence similarity searches, and refines data based on gene clusters to achieve high specificity and sensitivity. The platform also features an optimized interactive web interface for easy online analysis. The article highlights the importance of comprehensive VF characterization in understanding and controlling infectious diseases, especially in the context of emerging pathogens. Additionally, it discusses the limitations and future improvements of the platform, emphasizing the need for further research in predicting novel VFs.