I'm considering the architecture for a large LIMS system that is currently a desktop application written in Powerbuilder. The problem is that our company is expanding very quickly and we have many remote offices that are connected by VPN to our central servers. Our LIMS system is not fast for these remote locations. A web application obviously solves this problem but it is more difficult to build rich and robust applications on the web.

I recently started reading up on smart clients and am wondering if they would still be plagued by speed issues at remote locations. They sound like desktop applications with an improved distribution method. Instead of a page (or form) making 5 calls to the database (which is slow from a remote location) it will be making 5 calls to a web-API which will in turn make five calls to the database. It is still 5 round trips compare with one round trip for a web application.