No, clients should not change anything when transitioning from in-process adapters to remote adapters, provided that the name of the adapter set and the data adapters remains unchanged.
However, what you might consider adding is the management of the status item, which can be configured for each data adapter and is completely handled by the proxy adapter. It allows informing clients of any disconnections of the data adapters.

<!--
Optional.
Specifies an item name to be managed by the Proxy Adapter for
carrying information about the availability of the Remote Data Adapter.
This item will only supply one field, named "status", whose value
may only be one of the following:
- "connecting" if no connection with a remote server has taken place yet;
- "connected" if a connection with a remote server is currently in place;
- "reconnecting" if a connection with a remote server has been lost.
The item will support subscriptions in MERGE or RAW mode and requests
for the snapshot will also be supported.

Note that the chosen name should be such that no conflicts with the
item names supplied by the Remote Data Adapter can be possible.
Also note that the Metadata Adapter must be aware of this item when
performing permission checks.
Default: no item is added for carrying status information.
-->
<param name="status_item">remote_adapter_status</param>

Regards,
Giuseppe