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BMC AMI DevX vs JumpMind SymmetricDS comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

BMC AMI DevX
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
Software Configuration Management (1st), Debugging (6th), Database Development and Management (17th), Mainframe Application Development (1st), Test Data Management (6th), Mainframe Testing Tools (1st), Data Masking (7th)
JumpMind SymmetricDS
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
8.3
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Data Replication (16th)
 

Mindshare comparison

BMC AMI DevX and JumpMind SymmetricDS aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. BMC AMI DevX is designed for Test Data Management and holds a mindshare of 10.8%, up 3.6% compared to last year.
JumpMind SymmetricDS, on the other hand, focuses on Data Replication, holds 3.2% mindshare, up 1.7% since last year.
Test Data Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
BMC AMI DevX10.8%
Perforce Delphix22.8%
Broadcom Test Data Manager13.1%
Other53.3%
Test Data Management
Data Replication Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
JumpMind SymmetricDS3.2%
NetApp SnapMirror6.9%
NetApp Snapshot6.6%
Other83.3%
Data Replication
 

Featured Reviews

Brian Westerman - PeerSpot reviewer
Director of R&D at Syzygy Inc.
Helps to make mainframe data management process easier and saves manhours
We plan to replace BMC Compuware File-AID due to its price. Two years back, we paid 11,000 dollars. However, the current price is 27,900 dollars. The price has increased to at least eight times its initial cost. We would need to pay around 60,000 dollars to have all three products together. We also encountered issues during version updates.
reviewer1625691 - PeerSpot reviewer
CEO at a non-profit with 1-10 employees
Fully-featured, good performance, and easy to use and install
We are using it to back up the software across the network to a remote server It is fully featured. It has allowed me to do everything I wanted to do. It is also very easy to use and install. It is pretty self-explanatory, and their support was also very good. Everything is fine. The user…

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"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."
"It's a modernized development portal and helps reduce the learning curve for younger people coming in to work on the platform,"
"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."
"We had parallel development before, but the way ISPW implements it is better. It has more control and oversight of the process, whereas before, it was like the Wild West. Everybody could have their own package with their own version of the component in it... ISPW is constantly aware of it. It notifies when someone else is using or has a different version of that component."
"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."
"Test data management capabilities are good."
"We can develop in parallel today on ISPF, but it's giving us the advantage of the newer interface into the mainframe programming languages that younger programmers can use and are familiar with, rather than using the ISPF green screen."
"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."
"It is fully featured. It has allowed me to do everything I wanted to do."
 

Cons

"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."
"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."
"There are some features that are not well documented, so documentation could use a little help, on things like setting up deployment and which structures in the database correspond to which tables."
"It would be nice to have an audit trail to see what mainframe developers are using what."
"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."
"It's not as intuitive as it should be. In terms of navigation, there is a large training curve for using it. For a millennial it might be better, if they're used to Eclipse. But coming from a non-Eclipse environment and using Eclipse, though I have experience with Eclipse, it might be cumbersome."
"We plan to replace BMC Compuware File-AID due to its price. Two years back, we paid 11,000 dollars. However, the current price is 27,900 dollars. The price has increased to at least eight times its initial cost. We would need to pay around 60,000 dollars to have all three products together. We also encountered issues during version updates."
"It often doesn't play well with other plugins in the environment."
"The user interface could improve. We are looking at some cloud-based databases, and I don't think they support that."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price point is great."
"I like the seat-based licensing much more than MSU-based licensing, and that the cost has been competitive."
"In general, Compuware tools are very competitive."
"The only thing I would mention related to the licensing and/or the pricing, is that they have some visualization features in there that are licensed by concurrent users. We're starting to trip up on that. We're looking to probably increase the number of concurrent licenses that we have. But those types of licensing strategies, where they license by concurrent users or the number of seats is confusing for some people. They don't understand why it works sometimes and doesn't work other times."
"It has saved our developers time and effort when working on documentation, which is now more readable and fluent."
"In terms of pricing, there isn't an extra charge for the parts of it we use. It comes with the licenses we purchased for other products, so no complaints there. The licensing is built in with the other products that you purchase from Compuware."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
34%
Insurance Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Healthcare Company
9%
Retailer
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Large Enterprise16
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Compuware File-AID?
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 ...
What needs improvement with Compuware File-AID?
We plan to replace BMC Compuware File-AID due to its price. Two years back, we paid 11,000 dollars. However, the current price is 27,900 dollars. The price has increased to at least eight times its...
Does JumpMind SymmetricDS support a large array of databases?
Yes, it does. This data replication software works with many popular databases, allowing users to benefit from its services. What's more, it also works with many data warehouses, as well as streami...
Is JumpMind SymmetricDS easy to use for beginners?
I didn't start with JumpMind SymmetricDS, I actually started using it at a job when I was a little more introduced to data replication. That made me able to see the good features this software has....
Does JumpMind SymmetricDS provide frequent file synchronization?
How often do you need for your data to be synchronized? I'm asking this because different companies use data replication for different purposes. Some use it as simply updating backup, others to giv...
 

Also Known As

File-AID, Data for Db2, Code Debug, Data Studio, Workbench for Eclipse, Code Pipeline
SymmetricDS
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Helvetia, The IMT Group, Hapag-Lloyd, Royal Bank of Canada, Chunghwa Telecom
SmartMD, Cancer Research UK
Find out what your peers are saying about BMC AMI DevX vs. JumpMind SymmetricDS and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,114 professionals have used our research since 2012.