The High Energy Physics comunity in the Czech Republic consists of groups and individuals spread over several institutes and from the computing point of view from several domains. The two major laboratories are the Institute of Physics of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic and the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics of the Charles University in Prague. Several other groups exist in other institutes of the Academy of Sciences and ind the Czech Technical University.
Physicists from these laboratories are involved in several major experiments in international centers for HEP (experiments DELPHI and ATLAS on the LEP and LHC accelerators in CERN-Geneva and experiment H1 on the HERA accelerator in DESY-Hamburg) as well as in basic theoretical studies. All these activities are based heavily on usage of the computer infrastructure (Unix workstations) and due to broad international cooperation rely on good networking. The networking provides fast informations exchange and enables software sharing.
We are in the process of building the Czech computing center for HEP (CCC4HEP). The target of this activity is to deliver needed services to the whole Czech HEP community. One of the most importatnt parts of this center will be a central repository of the HEP information. This information will be partly mirrored from the major HEP laboratories all over the world and partly created in Prague. All information placed in the repository will serve to the whole HEP community in the Czech Republic and the data originated here should also be accessible from all international HEP places. Information center should provide not only storage for many kinds of information in different data- formats (text, graphics,...) but also interactive access to the information (databases, searchable indexes, discussion clubs).
Another part of the Center will be a repository of all major HEP software (general as well as experiment-specific). This will again be both mirrored and created in our HEP laboratories.
The main part of the CCC4HEP will be built in the Institute of Physics, which has the broadest experience both in the information technology and software export and also all the neccessary hardware (at least for the starting period of the project). The WWW server at www-hep.fzu.cz was the first server in the former East Europe. And the software repository based on NFS is now running for more than a year. The CCC4HEP itself, however, will be distributed over the all mentioned HEP laboratories In Prague.
The obvious choice for the information server is World Wide Web. The WWW offers broad spectrum of the possible data-formats and every imaginable access method. The integration of the World Wide Web and AFS may enable faster access to all information services particularly from the remote sites. The AFS replication and caching may be very important especially in the view of still growing amount of data transported via WWW over Internet. This is a result of growing use of graphics and sounds and will of course further accelerate when the VRML (Virtual Reality Markup Language)browsers and editors become available.
The software repository would be most conviniently based on the AFS Server, too. The servers would be established in the Institute of Physics of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic and in the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics of the Charles University in Praue. It would be an interesting task to try to establish the repository adminitration with the help of the WWW system. Coordination of the WWW and AFS may bring new possibilities for this task.