Open Dental Forum

I run our office servers in a virtual machine. I also develop software for my office and don't want to code against the production server so I work with a copy of the virtual machine.
The two servers are never on the same subnet at the same time. For example, I am coding at home right now and have the server up and running at home and the identical server running at the office.

Are there any issues regarding OD that I should be aware of when doing this? As a precaution, I have made OpenDentalEConnector and OpenDentalService services manual rather than automatic start on the development machine.
The only eservice I am using currently is the texting for appointment reminders.

Thanks

JLM

Are you using the "same" database for both environments?
I try to use unique registration keys for production vs. development environments.

Yes. It is an exact copy of the production database, albeit out of date by days or weeks. Does OD issue registration keys for developer use?

JLM

Yes, we do issue developer registration keys. Throw an email over to vendor.relations@opendental.com and include your name, the name of our company, and what type of software you're creating. However, developer registration keys are not meant to be used with live patient data. Once you get a developer key, I would recommend creating a database that only contains test data and doing your development against that database.

cmcgehee wrote:Yes, we do issue developer registration keys. Throw an email over to vendor.relations@opendental.com and include your name, the name of our company, and what type of software you're creating. However, developer registration keys are not meant to be used with live patient data. Once you get a developer key, I would recommend creating a database that only contains test data and doing your development against that database.

I would never be developing against the live DB at the office. I would be developing against a copy of it that is slightly out of date(hours -> days). My main concern is that, while the server vm is up on my development computer, I don't want it sending out appointment reminders based on obsolete data. ie 'you have an appointment tomorrow' when they cancelled that appointment yesterday.

That's why I was asking if simply disabling the opendental services would keep that from happening. Maybe I should disable internet access for the development vm as well?

Thanks for your help

JLM

Or maybe just firewall opendental on the development vm from accessing the internet?

JLM

Our recommendation is to use a database that has 0 real patient data present. If you do decide to develop against a copy of your live data, I would say to do it on a VM that has no internet access, and to never run the Open Dental Service or the eConnector against that database.

OK, thanks.

Sorry to keep bugging you about this.
Can I simply uninstall OpenDental from my copy of the server but leave mysql running and serving the opendental DB? ie. Does opendental itself have to be installed on the server for the workstations to operate?

Thanks

JLM

JLM wrote:Can I simply uninstall OpenDental from my copy of the server but leave mysql running and serving the opendental DB? ie. Does opendental itself have to be installed on the server for the workstations to operate?

Open Dental is not required to be installed for MySQL to run / serve the database (lots of our users have a Linux operating system hosting their database which cannot run Open Dental "natively").

Uninstalling OD does not remove the services it installs. I have no idea if they phone home once OD is uninstalled. As a precaution, I have blocked internet access for the VM at the router level.

JLM

JLM wrote:Uninstalling OD does not remove the services it installs. I have no idea if they phone home once OD is uninstalled. As a precaution, I have blocked internet access for the VM at the router level.

JLM

That's because the installer doesn't install the services.

jsalmon wrote:

JLM wrote:Uninstalling OD does not remove the services it installs. I have no idea if they phone home once OD is uninstalled. As a precaution, I have blocked internet access for the VM at the router level.

JLM

That's because the installer doesn't install the services.

More of a head's up to let you know your uninstall process doesn't remove running services that interact with the internet on computers that store PHI.

JLM

JLM wrote:

jsalmon wrote:

JLM wrote:Uninstalling OD does not remove the services it installs. I have no idea if they phone home once OD is uninstalled. As a precaution, I have blocked internet access for the VM at the router level.

JLM

That's because the installer doesn't install the services.

More of a head's up to let you know your uninstall process doesn't remove running services that interact with the internet on computers that store PHI.

JLM

I'm surprised that we don't even have an uninstall process documented in the first place. I'll get the documentation team on that.