Open Dental

Local API is complete. It will be part of version 22.1. This lets you send API messages directly to the local running instance of OpenDental.exe on port 30222. Because it's local instead of going through our HQ servers, it's blazing fast. We do quickly plan to add the eConnector port 30223 as a third possible endpoint. The downside to using the eConnector as an endpoint is that you will need to open up port 30223 on the firewall of that computer. The advantage of using the eConnector is that it's guaranteed to be always running, unlike local instances of Open Dental which might be shut down. Regardless of which of the three endpoints you choose, security is handled by our HQ, so the local API still requires a customer API key, etc.

I was asked about this post and wanted to clarify, as the person was concerned about opening a port on their server.
The opened port for the planned econnector version would be opened only to your local network (like for MySQL or MariaDb). Even this is not required to call the API on the econnector if the calling software is running on your server, which is the primary use case. In that case the call would be local to the server, so port does not need to be open. If the calling software is running on the client, it can just call the local port of the client (opendental.exe) and would not call the econnector open port.
The person asked about opening the port on the server because their IT saw this as a security issue. This is not the case in any sense. I defend this in the same way I would defend an open local port for MySQL, which everyone has to have. Better yet, as I explained, in most cases you would not do that because our goal is to not have the customer IT have to do anything at all: the third party can just program to use the local port and it will be the econnector handling the local call if it is the server, because an open dental client won't be running usually. If I am incorrect, I am all ears.

That's correct. Usually, when an IT person hears "open a port", then assume we mean changing a rule on the router to allow incoming traffic from the dangerous web. That's not what we're talking about.

Awesome! Very excited about the local option. Is there a release date for vs 22.1?