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BMC AMI DevX pros and cons

Vendor: BMC

4.0 out of 5

19 reviews
90% willing to recommend

Pros & Cons summary

BMC AMI DevX enhances mainframe software development with Topaz Xpediter and ISPW, optimizing debugging and parallel development for COBOL. Xpediter streamlines copy book retrieval, aiding independent testing. BMC Compuware simplifies data management, supporting tasks like data recovery. Editing tape files aids application development. Documentation needs better clarity, and source code editing is limited by special characters. REXX macro integration is absent, and audit trail features are required. Support fixes bugs but may introduce new issues.

Buyer's Guide

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

Prominent pros & cons

PROS

Xpediter, a key feature of Topaz, is highly valued for being more flexible than using it through MVS.

ISPW enhances parallel development by offering better control and oversight, unlike previous methods where components could have multiple versions.

IDAA feature has transformed data warehousing, business analytics, and big data, providing real-time information.

ISPW's integration of code management, deployment, and generation makes it a robust tool for mainframe code development and management.

BMC Data Management simplifies and improves the data recovery process, making it more efficient.

CONS

Documentation needs improvement to simplify troubleshooting and understanding of features.

REXX macros cannot be converted to be used under Topaz, making existing tools unusable.

JES Explorer restricts users due to fixed job name prefixes and lacks flexibility for group operations.

Technical support has been inconsistent, with bug fixes occasionally leading to new issues.

File-AID has faced significant price increases, influencing considerations for product replacement.

BMC AMI DevX Pros review quotes

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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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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HC

HEVERSON CAMPELO

Information Technology Analyst at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

Nov 5, 2020

I have worked with DB2's great features in the last five years. The IDAA feature transformed the vision of warehousing, business analytics, and big data at my bank. Besides the mainframe, I saw that this solution was evolutionary. It gives real-time information.

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reviewer1449762

IT Developer III at a government with 5,001-10,000 employees

Dec 9, 2020

I like the ability to flow through the source and see what happens to the data as the statements are executed. If there is a fault, it will track the event, and we can then look back to see why it may have caused the fault. You can also reverse engineer your test. You can set it so that you can go backward as well as forward in your test. This is something that I haven't done here at my company. Compuware Xpediter is one of the best debugging tools for mainframe software development. We have currently licensed only the COBOL language for Xpediter, but I know they have other languages, including Assembler, PL/I.

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reviewer1449762

IT Developer III at a government with 5,001-10,000 employees

Jun 29, 2021

I like the ability that it has to format copy books in a presentable manner. So, you will be able to see the starting offset in length of each field within the layout.

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BM

Sr Consultant Project Manager with 10,001+ employees

Jan 20, 2022

One of the features that the developers like is that they can retrieve what they need with the tool. They don't have to go through some process or request something be done by another team. They can get the programs they need, compile them, retrieve the JCL and alter the JCL if they need to, and put these programs wherever they need to go for their testing.

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Show 4 more reviews (out of 14)

BMC AMI DevX Cons review quotes

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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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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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: December 2025.

879,422 professionals have used our research since 2012.

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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HC

HEVERSON CAMPELO

Information Technology Analyst at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

Nov 5, 2020

DB2 is a hard tool to grasp. It's hard for users to learn how to use it. It's not easy to see how it works.

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reviewer1449762

IT Developer III at a government with 5,001-10,000 employees

Dec 9, 2020

Their technical support could be better. There were times where, when we reported bugs, they would fix one bug but add another one. That's probably because of their support model. A lot of organizations are developing software using Agile rather than the Waterfall method, so things are happening all over the place. You get things quicker, but sometimes one fix will break another one or add other bugs.

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reviewer1449762

IT Developer III at a government with 5,001-10,000 employees

Jun 29, 2021

Technical support has gotten better over the years, though there's always room for improvement.

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BM

Sr Consultant Project Manager with 10,001+ employees

Jan 20, 2022

When you're setting up the parameters for how ISPW will work in your shop, there are a lot of questions that have to be answered... BMC Compuware should have more in-depth explanations about what the choices in each question mean. If you pick A, what does that mean has to happen? What does that impact? If you pick B, what does that mean? What does that impact?

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Show 4 more reviews (out of 14)

Product Categories

Product Categories

Test Data Management

Software Configuration Management

Database Development and Management

Mainframe Application Development

Mainframe Testing Tools

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Product Categories

Product Categories

Test Data Management

Software Configuration Management

Database Development and Management

Mainframe Application Development

Mainframe Testing Tools

Popular Comparisons

Popular Comparisons

Informatica Intelligent Data Management Cloud (IDMC) vs BMC AMI DevX

Perforce Delphix vs BMC AMI DevX

Endevor vs BMC AMI DevX

Redgate SQL Toolbelt Essentials vs BMC AMI DevX

IBM Engineering Workflow Management vs BMC AMI DevX

Broadcom Test Data Manager vs BMC AMI DevX

Informatica Test Data Management (TDM) vs BMC AMI DevX

IBM InfoSphere Optim vs BMC AMI DevX

CA IDMS vs BMC AMI DevX

IBM Debug for z/OS vs BMC AMI DevX

IBM File Manager vs BMC AMI DevX

DATPROF vs BMC AMI DevX

IBM InfoSphere Optim Test Data Management (TDM) vs BMC AMI DevX

Rocket ChangeMan ZMF (formerly a Micro Focus product) vs BMC AMI DevX

InterTest vs BMC AMI DevX

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