Web Service Layer

[DrDRH]

Is the Web Service Layer stable at this point? Does it speed up VPN data transfer between remote locations? Is is a cook-book setup or does it require an IT person to configure? Anyone using the WSL successfully? Any comments? Thanks.

[jordansparks]

Yes, for version 6.8. The problem is that it's new, so we're the only ones testing it. Therefore, it is hard to find all the bugs, and the early adopters will have to put up with discovering bugs. The bugs are really really obvious and we can fix them quickly when they are reported to us.

[DrDRH]

How about the VPN question. do we need to have a vpn tunnel between offices for the web layer to work securely?
does it use ssl?
can we have a local server at the satellite office, accessing the database at the main location realtime and clients at the satellite using the db?

On another note, if we do not use web service, can we replicate real time from primary office to satellite offices?

thank you so much for your assistance

[jordansparks]

VPN is probably best. You could also probably use https without any problem, but we wouldn't be able to help advise you on how. Both methods use ssl which is completely external to Open Dental. If you are using the web service, you have to stick to one server.

Replication between two servers is a totally different strategy than the web service. Replication works great. Nice and fast. Near real-time for new data from one server showing up on the other server. Maybe a 1 to 20 second delay depending on what replication software you use.

[Ardavan]

hello all,

setup the web service on lan as instructed, works well when reading, however crashes on certain write functions. tried using root as the db user but still experiencing same issues. has anybody in the field successfully used the web service? if so do you have any tips or tricks? thank you.

Ardy

[jordansparks]

Which certain write functions? Which specific version?

[Ardavan]

Thank you Dr. Sparks for the reply, i understand you're a very busy guy so ill keep it brief.

we are on version 7.0.11.0

i am playing around with it now, i was able to chart, add an appointment, and add a patient but it crashed when i attempted to delete the appointment.

we are currently using terminal services, but it would be nice to have other options that won't bog down our server once we have more terminal users.

thanks again for the reply, and i look forward to reading the next.

[jordansparks]

Just upgrade to 7.0.32. Should work much better. If you think you find a bug, test it with both the web service and direct connection. You know it's a bug if it behaves differently depending on the connection method.

[Ardavan]

What is the correct procedure to report a bug?
We are now on 14.2 and again experimenting with the web service layer. When connected through the web service layer we consistently get an unhanded exception when changing the appointment status. Ignoring the exception seems safe, however it is annoying and scary to the team. And by the way awesome work, I love opendental more than any business software I've ever supported or worked with, it rocks!

[jsalmon]

The forum is a fine place to submit bug reports. Sometimes they can spawn lengthy discussions of their own so I'd recommend starting a new thread for each bug in the Developers forum. I've created a ticket for our debugging department to look into the issue you mentioned above.

[jwhitney]

I haven't been able to get the unhandled exception that you are talking about, and I have been rigorously changing appointment statuses all over the place. If you could let us know specifically how you are able to consistently get the exception, it will speed up the process of fixing this issue.

[jsalmon]

Give us the exception text as well. Also, are you using any plugins? The middle tier doesn't work with plugins until v14.3:

Plugins now supported in Middle Tier.

http://opendental.com/manual/version14_3.html

[Ardavan]

Thank you J and J for the prompt replies. Just to reiterate we are consistently causing an unhandled exception by clicking on an item from the appointment status listbox within the main appointments screen when connected via the web service. The exception does not occur when changing the appointment status from the edit appointment modal window, nor does it occur when connected directly (not using the web service layer). I am not sure where to check for plugins, if it's "Program Links" then there are only two enabled, X-Charge and Teisia Bridge, however the exception occurs even after disabling the plugins and relaunching open dental. The exception does not occur if a patient is not selected when the appointment status listbox is clicked. The exception carries the same title as the OpenDental program, "TitleText {username} - LNAME, FNAME - patnum", without the quotation marks and with actual values rather than placeholders of course. It is of type "Object reference not set to an instance of an object" and the details are pasted below. Despite throwing an exception the field is updated within the database and that update may be seen by navigating away from then back to the main appointments screen.

See the end of this message for details on invoking
just-in-time (JIT) debugging instead of this dialog box.

************** Exception Text **************
System.Exception: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
at OpenDentBusiness.RemotingClient.ProcessGetVoid(DtoGetVoid dto)
at OpenDentBusiness.Meth.GetVoid(MethodBase methodBase, Object[] parameters)
at OpenDentBusiness.Appointments.SetConfirmed(Int64 aptNum, Int64 newStatus)
at OpenDental.ContrAppt.listConfirmed_MouseDown(Object sender, MouseEventArgs e)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.OnMouseDown(MouseEventArgs e)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WmMouseDown(Message& m, MouseButtons button, Int32 clicks)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WndProc(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.ListBox.WndProc(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.OnMessage(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.WndProc(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.NativeWindow.Callback(IntPtr hWnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr wparam, IntPtr lparam)


************** Loaded Assemblies **************
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************** JIT Debugging **************
To enable just-in-time (JIT) debugging, the .config file for this
application or computer (machine.config) must have the
jitDebugging value set in the system.windows.forms section.
The application must also be compiled with debugging
enabled.

For example:

<configuration>
<system.windows.forms jitDebugging="true" />
</configuration>

When JIT debugging is enabled, any unhandled exception
will be sent to the JIT debugger registered on the computer
rather than be handled by this dialog box.

[jsalmon]

Thank you for the exception text and information, I see where the bug is now. I'll add it to our bug tracker as soon as I can figure out how exactly to describe what exactly is going wrong.

Somehow something has set the list of plugins to null which is causing a problem when Plugins.HookAddCode() gets called (which is a lot). This problem occurs even if no plugins are installed so that is what makes it hard to describe for the bug tracker. I want to put the root of the issue along with your appointment status portion as part of the description, not all this plugin jargon that isn't going to help anybody.

[jsalmon]

Bug "Middle tier, changing the status of an appointment from the Appts module was causing an error." fixed and will be released with v14.1.24 and v14.2.30
http://opendentalsoft.com:1942/ODBugTra ... sions.aspx