Tables and SQL
Population genomics data is not exactly tabular. VCF itself is composed of ranged coordinate data along with highly serialized and customizable variant-specific and sample-specific information, which is not amenable to tabular databases. However, population genomics does depend on ancillary data (such as allele frequency statistics, annotations, phenotypic data, and more) that can be efficiently modeled as tables.
TileDB models tabular data as arrays.
More specifically, the TileDB array model is a generalization of the tabular model and, hence, can offer all the tabular functionality you would expect from a tabular database system, including a SQL interface. For more details, visit the Analytics solution section, which covers TileDB’s tabular functionality in detail. This functionality can be used in conjunction with TileDB-VCF and TileDB Cloud, unifying genomic and tabular data in a single data format, and a single, securely governed database system.