Middle Tier Experience?

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ddpesta
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Middle Tier Experience?

Post by ddpesta » Wed Aug 02, 2017 8:36 am

Hi,
I'm in the middle of converting a practice over to Opendental, which will be the first of five practices. It would be possible to use the 'clinics' functionality and combine the databases of the five practices.

I'm interested in hearing from anyone who has tried this. Having one database server instead of five has some appeal, but will latency totally kill our performance? Thanks in advance for your input.

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jsalmon
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Re: Middle Tier Experience?

Post by jsalmon » Wed Aug 02, 2017 11:46 am

I know our conversions department can merge a newly converted database into another database as another clinic. I don't fully understand how complicated it is or what cost goes along with it but I do know we have done it in the past. You should definitely use newer versions of Open Dental which are more and more "enterprise" friendly as time goes on. Give our conversions department a call if you aren't already in cahoots with them.
http://www.opendental.com/manual/conversions.html

We have many customers using our Middle Tier framework and they are very happy with it. Your experience will be undesirable if you don't have reliable internet because Open Dental assumes you have access to the database at the drop of a hat. Latency could be a problem depending on your setup. If your server is in China and you live in USA then you might not have a good time, but if you have a decent internet connection to your server then it should be fine.

I'm a firm believer in our Middle Tier and I think it is a great answer for large offices wanting to share and or centralize data.
http://www.opendental.com/manual/middletier.html
The best thing about a boolean is even if you are wrong, you are only off by a bit.

Jason Salmon
Open Dental Software
http://www.opendental.com

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irfan
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Re: Middle Tier Experience?

Post by irfan » Mon Nov 20, 2017 7:14 pm

i wish I could say its been great.... but it hasnt.. we have had it for a while now, and update after update we still have massive lag. my offices are all on 100mbps connections and a robust amazon server. MOST modules are fine, but the charting is slow and the treatment plan module takes 25 seconds to assign a priority to procedures. seriously, ive timed it several times. a plan with 6 priorities will eat 3 minutes of your life. its embarassing for the treatment coordinators.

we get some UEs but they get squashed in a couple months... but man the lag has been so bad that we are considering switching to curve or ascend...

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jsalmon
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Re: Middle Tier Experience?

Post by jsalmon » Tue Nov 21, 2017 12:55 pm

irfan wrote:...MOST modules are fine, but the charting is slow and the treatment plan module takes 25 seconds to assign a priority to procedures. seriously, ive timed it several times.
That just sounds like a bug. What version are you using? If you'd like to provide us with a copy of your database we can inspect it and run some time tests to hopefully improve speed in those modules. You can either call in or PM me if you'd like to upload your db for investigation.

If it isn't a bug then my best guess would be that you are getting artificially throttled by some entity in-between you and your web server. Open Dental is pretty chatty and they might think you are attempting a DDoS attack (depending on how many workstations you have).
The best thing about a boolean is even if you are wrong, you are only off by a bit.

Jason Salmon
Open Dental Software
http://www.opendental.com

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irfan
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Re: Middle Tier Experience?

Post by irfan » Tue Nov 21, 2017 4:40 pm

It’s been like this with every version in the last year. I know this summer there were some updates to help with the txplan module speed on middle tier. Your team remoted in today, I’ll wait to see what they found out

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cmcgehee
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Re: Middle Tier Experience?

Post by cmcgehee » Wed Nov 22, 2017 4:18 pm

I released some speed improvements for the Treatment Plan module in 17.3.23 for patients that had a lot of procedures. On my database, I got it down from 15 seconds to 3 seconds for a patient that had about 30 procedures. If you update to 17.3.23 and there's still slowness in the Treatment Plan module, we'll collect your database for further troubleshooting.
Chris McGehee
Open Dental Software
http://www.opendental.com

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cmcgehee
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Re: Middle Tier Experience?

Post by cmcgehee » Wed Nov 22, 2017 4:24 pm

Regarding slowness in the Chart module, are you displaying the "Broken Appts" field in the Patient Info grid in the lower left? I found that field to be adding quite a few seconds to the loading of the Chart module.
Chris McGehee
Open Dental Software
http://www.opendental.com

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irfan
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Re: Middle Tier Experience?

Post by irfan » Wed Nov 22, 2017 7:17 pm

Thanks guys. I’ll check it out when it’s released. I’ll double check the patient brokenappt field, no clue off the top of my head.

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cmcgehee
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Re: Middle Tier Experience?

Post by cmcgehee » Thu Nov 30, 2017 8:09 am

I fixed a slowness issue in the Chart module when the "Broken Appts" field is displayed in the Patient Info grid. This will be available in 17.2.40 and 17.3.27.
Chris McGehee
Open Dental Software
http://www.opendental.com

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irfan
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Re: Middle Tier Experience?

Post by irfan » Thu Nov 30, 2017 12:37 pm

Cool thanks. There were speed improvements for sure, we went from 25seconds to change treatment priorities to 12 seconds. 12s is still mega slow but hey, it’s not 25s.

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cmcgehee
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Re: Middle Tier Experience?

Post by cmcgehee » Thu Nov 30, 2017 1:45 pm

Jason committed a speed improvement for 17.3.27 that looks like it will also help speed up the TP module. His fix helped out patients where the insurance plan was PPO, so if the patients that take 12 seconds to change treatment priorities have PPO insurance, it might be worth updating again once 17.3.27 is released.
Chris McGehee
Open Dental Software
http://www.opendental.com

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irfan
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Re: Middle Tier Experience?

Post by irfan » Thu Nov 30, 2017 2:48 pm

Awesome thanks. Yea we have lots of PPO. ETA on 17.3.27?

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jsalmon
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Re: Middle Tier Experience?

Post by jsalmon » Thu Nov 30, 2017 4:08 pm

irfan wrote:Awesome thanks. Yea we have lots of PPO. ETA on 17.3.27?
It was released roughly one hour ago.
The best thing about a boolean is even if you are wrong, you are only off by a bit.

Jason Salmon
Open Dental Software
http://www.opendental.com

aliallam22
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Re: Middle Tier Experience?

Post by aliallam22 » Sun Jul 15, 2018 9:13 pm

What exactly is Middle Tier for? How does it work?

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cmcgehee
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Re: Middle Tier Experience?

Post by cmcgehee » Mon Jul 16, 2018 7:44 am

Middle Tier is a way that you have each Open Dental program talk to a service instead of directly to the database. The primary advantages to this are that it makes it easier to access the same database from multiple locations and it also enhances security because you don't have to store the MySQL password on every workstation. Here's a link that describes how it works: http://opendental.com/manual/middletier.html.
Chris McGehee
Open Dental Software
http://www.opendental.com

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