Building the repositories to serve

The project to design and build the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC) Laboratory also includes the exciting opportunity to implement client/server information systems. Lab technologists were eager to take advantage of the cost savings inherent in the open systems and a distributed, client server environment and, at the same time, conscious of the need to provide secure repositories for sensitive data as well as a schedule sensitive acquisition strategy for mission critical software. During the first year of project activity, micro-based project management and business support systems were acquired and implemented to support a small study project of less than 400 people allocating contracts of less than $1 million. The transition to modern business systems capable of supporting more than 10,000 participants (world wide) who would be researching and developing the new technologies that would support the world's largest scientific instrument, a 42 Tevatron, superconducting, super collider became a mission critical event. This paper will present the SSC Laboratory's strategy to balance its commitment to open systems, structured query language (SQL) standards and its success with acquiring commercial off the shelf software to support immediate goals. Included will be an outline of the vital roles played by other labs (Livermore, CERN, Brookhaven, Fermi and others) and a discussion of future collaboration potentials to leverage the information activities of all Department of Energy funded labs