Yes, offline usage is necessary due to the amount of queries that run within the application to access the data. Some forms-reports take longer than a minute in running all the queries before actually displaying something if all the tables are online (ODBC SQL server). Because of the number of queries on the database, user will have to work with this data locally stored, then as the users add or edit the data locally, this have to be uploaded/synchronised (in batches probably) to the ODBC tables, "cloud", and the same process repeated with all the users, so they can see the changes done by other users, when their front-ends synchronise again to the updated ODBC tables. On which lessons/seminars, do you teach to do this processes?.

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Reply from Alex Hedley:

Why don't you create VIEWS in the SQL Server and have that process the data, then get access to grab the VIEWS, this should speed up the time it takes, if you have Access create the Queries it has to pull down all the data first then run the Queries.