The Hierarchical Data System (HDS) is a file-based hierarchical data system designed for the storage of a wide variety of information. It is particularly suited to the storage of large multi-dimensional arrays (with their ancillary data) where efficient access is needed. It is a key component of the Starlink software collection (ascl:1110.012) and is used by the Starlink N-Dimensional Data Format (NDF) library (ascl:1411.023).

HDS organizes data into hierarchies, broadly similar to the directory structure of a hierarchical filing system, but contained within a single HDS container file. The structures stored in these files are self-describing and flexible; HDS supports modification and extension of structures previously created, as well as functions such as deletion, copying, and renaming. All information stored in HDS files is portable between the machines on which HDS is implemented. Thus, there are no format conversion problems when moving between machines. HDS can write files in a private binary format (version 4), or be layered on top of HDF5 (version 5).