Aim for higher altitudes.

TinyDS is a modern, minimal, simple and scalable DMS (Document Management System) built to handle hundreds of millions of documents. It can run serverless, in a container, or locally with the same codebase. You can use TinyDS as a SaaS to freely store documents. Either your own documents that only you can access, or for a group that shares documents where you can set permissions for who can do what.

Performance-wise, TinyDS is designed to replace larger DMS systems, but at a much lower cost, with better functionality and superior performance.

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Registration To TinyDS GUI

The foundation of document management

Long experience with large-scale document storage leads to the conclusion that a DMS fundamentally has two requirements. To guarantee that stored documents are searchable and to protect documents with access control. Nothing more or less. As the dominant systems on the market are very complex and can be likened to clumsy dinosaurs, TinyDS was built as a comparatively fast little lizard. Read more about some of its benefits below.

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Simple, robust and fast
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API-first with a minimal API
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Attribute + role-based access control
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Dynamic configuration of attributes and roles
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Features of TinyDS

TinyDS has an integrated editor, making it possible to directly write and store documents in TinyDS without needing to open an external editor such as Word. Fast and simple.

Documents can, instead of being stored, be generated on demand from templates and metadata, which saves storage space. This can be used for documents that can be mass-produced from a template, for example when all customers receive similar documents with data specific to each customer.

All documents are indexed in the background, enabling full-text search on words in document content or metadata.

Documents can be digitally signed with a digital signature. Signatures are stored in TinyDS. For PDFs, they are also stored in the document itself. Signers are added from TinyDS clients. Then signing links can be sent to external users.

Documents can be shared via link with external users who are not registered in TinyDS. These users can log in with a code and view the document.

TinyDS can store all kinds of document formats, essentially regardless of size. PDFs, images, and videos can be viewed directly in the TinyDS GUI. Other document types are converted to PDF before viewing when possible.

When a document is saved again, a new version is created. You can revert to a previous versions or view how a document looked before the last change.

All operations in the API except logging in and registering a user require permissions. You can either register as an individual user or as part of a group/company. In the former case, you have full rights to your own documents. In the latter case, permissions are set up by a group administrator.

For individual users, document types and attributes are standardized and common to all individuals. For users who share documents within a group, these are defined by a group administrator.

Everything done with the document views, updates, etc. is logged. These audit logs can be easily inspected by authorized users.

Notifications are sent when documents are created or deleted. A simple example of a notification client is a notification client.

Documents can be stored in AWS S3, locally on file (MinIO) or in the database. Other storage options can be added, such as Azure Blob Storage. Sensitive documents can be stored locally while other documents are stored in the cloud.

You can subscribe to changes to receive an email when a document is updated.

For all documents, comments can be saved in a specific annotations view. PDF documents can also be annotated in a special annotation view, where different points in the document can be marked and annotated with text.

Handles uploading of essentially arbitrarily large files by dividing them into smaller parts that are uploaded in parallel.

Default server is a serverless lambda located on AWS. With the same codebase, the server can run locally or with another cloud provider.

TinyDS can be accessed via a REST API. MMCli is a Python client that uses this API.
GUI client is a GUI client. The same login works for both.

Administration of document types, users, permissions, roles and document templates can be done via an admin CLI

An upcoming development is to group documents into envelopes. These will be able to have methods, such as signing, which will then be applied to all documents in the envelope. Envelopes will also have states connected to a state machine. TinyDS will then be able to be used as a simple case management system.

Besides access control, documents are stored securely. They will in the future be scanned with antivirus and automatically backed up. They will also be able to be encrypted at rest.

Migration of documents to TinyDS can be done via a REST API. For Filenet installations, it is possible to migrate without initially needing to move files, which is the most time-consuming migration. This is done by migrating metadata from Filenet's DOCVERSION table and letting the documents remain on disk. Tools for the latter remain to be written.

TODO. AI classification of documents to map them to the correct document type and metadata from document content. The idea is to be able to import larger quantities of documents from disk this way.

Interfaces.

See below the user interface, admin interface and CLI. The first is for searching, storing and viewing documents. The second is for administering document types, metadata and permissions etc. The third is for communication from other programs. The CLI is an implementation of the TinyDS Rest API.

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Roadmap

See a few of the near-term plans below.

  1. August 2026
    AI classification of documents to map to the correct document type and metadata from document content.
  2. September 2026
    Envelopes of documents, with shared methods (e.g. signing) and states
  3. October 2026
    More authentication methods
  4. November 2026
    Virus scanning
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