We just announced TileDB 2.0 that adds support for string and heterogeneous dimensions to sparse arrays. Axes labels can now be implemented by "attaching" any sparse array (acting practically as any dataframe) by mapping coordinates (e.g., string labels) to positional indices. Currently, the user must do it manually. We'd like to hear some feedback on what API you would like us to add to make axes labels more seamless with the array object.

Wow, this would be super useful. E.g. indexing by string in conjunction with https://feedback.tiledb.com/tiledb-core/p/support-string-dimensions.

Integration into xarray in python and feature parity to xarray in other languages would be the silver bullet.