Smart Clients

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.

If by LIMS you mean Lab Info Management Systems, then from what I have just read on it, a browser based application still does what you need. I do not know much about LIMS, but what do you think needs to be made 'rich' that web applications cannot do?

In most cases you will find that the GUI-windows-form based richness can often be done away with, a simple interface can often replace it.

You're right about the web services though. The actual advantage of web services is that you get to keep your business logic in one place (the web service) and you can update it whenever you like with minimal 'deployments' to the clients. It's not really about saving you roundtrips.

If you want to save on roundtrips, you will need to look at web applications.

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Originally Posted by mendhak

In most cases you will find that the GUI-windows-form based richness can often be done away with, a simple interface can often replace it.

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It's true. I'm just a little web-shy since our last large project failed largely due to an attempt to make it very slick (Ajax, third-party controls, etc.). I guess if we keep it simple then it would work. With a desktop application I can deliver both so it is frustrating to have to "dumb things down" for a web application. I guess the important thing is that it works.