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BMC AMI DevX pros and cons

Vendor: BMC

4.0 out of 5

20 reviews
91% willing to recommend

Pros & Cons summary

BMC AMI DevX accelerates documentation processes and enhances stability but struggles with plugin compatibility and testing tool integration. Topaz Workbench integrates with Eclipse, offering valued debugging capabilities. BMC Compuware ISPW enhances code management, saving manhours. Xpediter supports various languages, including COBOL. Despite its superior support and feature enhancements, BMC AMI DevX's price increases and occasional support issues concern users, necessitating documentation clarity to ease troubleshooting.

Buyer's Guide

Get pricing advice, tips, use cases and valuable features from real users of this product.

Prominent pros & cons

PROS

BMC AMI DevX accelerates documentation processes and enhances stability once configured and deployed.

Topaz Workbench offers seamless integration into Eclipse, valued by developers for its debugging capabilities and features like ISPW, which improves control in parallel development.

BMC AMI DevX is recognized for superior support, listening to customer requests and incorporating enhancements that streamline operations like CICS NEWCOPYs and Db2 binds.

Compuware Xpediter stands as a top debugging tool for mainframe software, efficiently supporting various languages such as COBOL.

BMC Compuware ISPW is appreciated for robust features in code management and deployment, easing mainframe data management and saving manhours with its file editing and cloning abilities.

CONS

BMC AMI DevX often lacks compatibility with other plugins, leading to integration issues.

Documentation improvements are needed to enhance clarity and ease troubleshooting.

The insufficient integration of testing tools makes them less intuitive compared to other development environments.

Technical support has room for improvement, as updates sometimes introduce new issues.

The price of BMC AMI DevX has significantly increased, creating cost concerns for users.

BMC AMI DevX Pros review quotes

IT Mainframe Lead Developer at a consumer goods company with 5,001-10,000 employees

May 26, 2016

My guess is this would have taken twice as long, or we would have had many more issues without using Xpediter.

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TM

Torrie McLaughlin

Mainframe Systems Programmer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

Aug 22, 2018

From a user perspective, the GUIs make it easier for people to see and interact with files on the mainframe.

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Lead Specialist at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

Aug 28, 2018

The most valuable feature of Topaz is Xpediter. It's more flexible than Xpediter through MVS.

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Support for Development Teams on Mainframe at CNP TI

Sep 21, 2018

The plugin ISPW integrated into Eclipse is a really valuable functionality for developers who already use it.

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Advanced Specialist at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

Oct 2, 2018

The debugging is really the most important feature, enabling us to be able to step through.

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JS

Lead Mainframe Systems Programming Analyst at a logistics company with 10,001+ employees

Oct 8, 2018

As far as the software vendors that I work with go, Compuware has some of the best support, in terms of listening to customer requests and accepting enhancements to the product and the like.

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JE

Jerry Edgington

Senior Assistant Analyst at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

Oct 28, 2018

It helps our staff work by speeding up their documentation process.

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JW

Technical Analyst at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

Mar 16, 2021

The smart editor helps because it will code-complete for me. I can see code working a lot faster and I'm able to get things coded in less time.

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Mainframe Architect at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees

Feb 20, 2021

It does our CICS NEWCOPYs and our Db2 binds for us, whereas before, that was a manual process. It takes a lot of the workload off of the operations folks and off the DBAs.

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reviewer1142301

Works at a insurance company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Jul 17, 2019

The visual ability to see potential downstream impacts to changes being made assists our developers in understanding the impact associated with their change.

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BMC AMI DevX Cons review quotes

IT Mainframe Lead Developer at a consumer goods company with 5,001-10,000 employees

May 26, 2016

Initial setup can be tricky in some cases.

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TM

Torrie McLaughlin

Mainframe Systems Programmer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

Aug 22, 2018

I'm always looking for improvement in things like the documentation, to make things a little bit easier and simpler to understand, a place where people can go to troubleshoot issues.

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Lead Specialist at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

Aug 28, 2018

The ability to edit source code that has special characters is limited. The ability to incorporate or convert REXX into macros that are usable under the Topaz software is not there. And the REXX macros that I have developed over 40 years of work are useless, so I have a toolbox I can't use or deploy using the Topaz technology, while I can use it under MVS.

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Free Report: BMC AMI DevX Reviews and More

Learn what your peers think about BMC AMI DevX. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: May 2026.

892,868 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Support for Development Teams on Mainframe at CNP TI

Sep 21, 2018

The ISPW plugin could be improved to add some functionality which is already in ISPF panels and not in the plugin.

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Advanced Specialist at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

Oct 2, 2018

I find it more cumbersome to use Topaz.

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JS

Lead Mainframe Systems Programming Analyst at a logistics company with 10,001+ employees

Oct 8, 2018

The area for improvement is related to the testing tools that are available for unit testing or acceptance testing. I know they have some out there that we are not licensed for at this time, but it seems like some of the Eclipse tools that are used for other programming languages, they're all just built-in and they're a little more intuitive to the developers. Making those testing tools as intuitive as possible, and as integrated as possible into the workbench, would be really beneficial.

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JE

Jerry Edgington

Senior Assistant Analyst at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

Oct 28, 2018

It often doesn't play well with other plugins in the environment.

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JW

Technical Analyst at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

Mar 16, 2021

I'm waiting to see what 19.2 for Topaz looks like, but I have a problem with the JES Explorer right now. It limits you to a certain prefix for job names and there are some groups that have multiple prefixes that they'd like to see all at once in their job names, because of how they work in a group. And they can't see that in the JES Explorer.

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Mainframe Architect at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees

Feb 20, 2021

One thing I would really like to see some improvement on is the promotion diagnostic messages. It invokes utilities "under the covers" to copy components, and it does not echo back any of the error messages from those utilities.

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reviewer1142301

Works at a insurance company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Jul 17, 2019

Better discussions to identify inventory prior to the start of any migration would be helpful for potential clients that have applications with code that is not modified often.

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Show 9 more reviews (out of 19)

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