OpenDental?
For those who may not have heard of OpenDental prior, it is an open source Dental Practice Management Software that allows dental clinics to manage essential data for their day to day operations. This can include, but not limited to:
- Appointments
- Create, Read, Update, Delete Patients Appointments
- Accounts
- Send emails, text, appointment reminders
- Credit Card processing
- Charts/Images
- 3D toothing chart for each patient
In the backend, the OpenDental system works in a server-client architecture. A central OpenDental server, which runs on Windows 10 or a Windows Server, acts as the broker when OpenDental clients (Windows 10) queries data from its relational database (MySQL). Within the database, it also stores indexes of images, which directs the clients to a file share when X-Ray images are requested.
In a typical 3-tier architecture model, the diagram shows how the OpenDental system can be modular, which will allow any of the three tiers to be upgraded or replaced independently. In the event of a disaster, admins can quickly determine the point of failure, and perform a failover as required.