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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

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: March 2026.

885,444 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 8 more reviews (out of 18)

Product Categories

Product Categories

Test Data Management

Software Configuration Management

Database Development and Management

Mainframe Application Development

Mainframe Testing Tools

AI Software Development

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Product Categories

Product Categories

Test Data Management

Software Configuration Management

Database Development and Management

Mainframe Application Development

Mainframe Testing Tools

AI Software Development

Popular Comparisons

Popular Comparisons

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

Perforce Delphix vs BMC AMI DevX

Redgate SQL Toolbelt Essentials vs BMC AMI DevX

Endevor vs BMC AMI DevX

IBM Engineering Workflow Management vs BMC AMI DevX

Broadcom Test Data Manager vs BMC AMI DevX

Nutanix Database Service vs BMC AMI DevX

SQL Sentry vs BMC AMI DevX

IBM InfoSphere Optim vs BMC AMI DevX

Informatica Test Data Management (TDM) vs BMC AMI DevX

CA IDMS 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

Solix Enterprise Data Management vs BMC AMI DevX

See all alternatives

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