The product has made our mainframe data management process easier. It has helped us save manhours. The tool's most valuable feature is the ability to edit tape files. Its ability to clone files is beneficial in application development. 

Users don't have to pay for on-prem servers. The application is mostly in the cloud. It can be used across many countries. It doesn't matter where you are, you can use the application anywhere, anytime. 

The solution does handle large amounts of data. Banking systems always have big data that takes a lot of time to get processed.

Test data management capabilities are good. Sometimes it can be difficult to align with the requirements of the customer as it isn't exactly like transactional data. 

BMC Data Management improved our data recovery process by simplifying it. With IMS, recovery meant reloading the last transaction backup to restore databases quickly during downtime. It has been effective, ensuring minimal disruption and enabling smooth operations even during recovery events.

One of the features that the developers like is that they can retrieve what they need with ISPW. They don't have to go through a 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. They can promote all the way through to the production step. I know that might make a lot of companies nervous when we talk about the fact that developers can promote to production. What that means is the developers promote the code to the point of being ready to be released into production.  The release step is still controlled using your current approval process. This  gives the development staff a lot more control over what they're doing, and it dovetails nicely into an Agile process. ISPW is really great at giving the developers access to all of the components all the way through the process.

The control of actually putting code into production is more about the "when" and not the "how." In most companies, your change-control coordinators or business analysts,  or managers that release code into production environment, will still do that last step. That's all controllable and secure at different levels. But it really gives the development staff a way to get everything where it needs to be, staged-up and ready to be released so that they can go work on something else. And the management of that movement into production is still maintained through whatever level you choose. 

I think the most valuable features are code management, code deployment, and code generation. The fact that those three features are included makes BMC Compuware ISPW a robust product. If one of those features was missing, it would be less robust and less interesting. But because it has those three features, it is a very good solution for code development and management.

I like that Compuware File-AID can actually map out control sections within load modules, or, as they're now known, program objects.

It can run a batch job to produce reports and spreadsheets or CSB to format a spreadsheet.

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.

The use of the product is very straightforward as well.

Integration is very easy.

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.

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.  

One of the features that I like is that I can open up and move tabs outside the eclipse window to different screens in a multi-screen environment, and I'm able to expand it to see a larger amount of code than I could see on an ISPF screen.

I also like the hyper links for datasets when looking at JCL that can be used to look at contents of files.

It's pretty much a purpose-built application for source control and change management. That's what we use it for.

The visual ability to see potential downstream impacts to code changes is a value add in helping our developers identify and understand the impact associated with their change. Utilization of the deploy feature in ISPW has also been a key functionality.

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

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

From a development point of view, we use it to log documentation and edit steps. The documentation is easy to read and our developers can add information into documents simultaneously.

We are also using the Topaz Workbench Host Communications Interface with its data sets. 

• Modernized development portal
• Helps reduce the learning curve for younger people coming in to work on the platform

The most important features are the file editing and browsing features. They are essential to an application developer; those are functions they have to be able to do. Having some nice features related to those activities really helps them. 

Also, the debugging capabilities are important. Again, they are essential to application developers.

• The plugin ISPW integrated into Eclipse is a really valuable functionality for developers who already use it. It helps to have quick access to the components, to see versions, life cycle, and to do generation and deployment in the environments. 

• ISPW deployment can be interfaced using API to "XL Release" product (XebiaLabs). In the months coming, we are going to implement this functionality in our DevOps project.

From a user perspective, the GUIs make it easier for people to see and interact with files on the mainframe. That's probably one of the most useful. It makes the mainframe a little bit easier to handle for new users.

• The ability to step through code line by line.
• The ability to see and change variables - The ability to skip past lines of code that were already certified.
• The freedom to NOT have to load databases in order to do your testing.
• The ability to intercept all modules in a call chain, if necessary.