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BMC AMI DevX vs Sentry comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 15, 2026

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
Ranking in Debugging
9th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
Software Configuration Management (1st), Database Development and Management (19th), Mainframe Application Development (1st), Test Data Management (6th), Mainframe Testing Tools (1st), Data Masking (6th), AI Software Development (200th)
Sentry
Ranking in Debugging
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (12th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Debugging category, the mindshare of BMC AMI DevX is 3.3%. The mindshare of Sentry is 10.2%, down from 32.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Debugging Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Sentry10.2%
BMC AMI DevX3.3%
Other86.5%
Debugging
 

Featured Reviews

PM
Developer at Selfemployed
Good for large amounts of data and has a variety of use cases but can be complex to use
It's a very complicated tool. Sometimes the customer wants better, faster transaction times. They want the solution to move as fast as possible. We're trying to scale and grow our application with more servers to get the level of speed desired. Everything from small processes to big batch processing needs to be faster.
NM
Founding Member at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Real-time error tracking assists the QA team in swiftly identifying and reporting bugs
One of the greatest advantages of Sentry is its support for Azure Web Services, which New Relic does not support. Sentry integrates with common developer communication platforms like Discord and WhatsApp, which allows developers to easily track notifications and findings in the applications. Real-time error tracking helps our Quality Assurance team easily identify the root causes of problems or bugs and promptly inform the developers about specific issues.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The plugin ISPW integrated into Eclipse is a really valuable functionality for developers who already use it."
"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."
"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."
"The most valuable feature of Topaz is Xpediter. It's more flexible than Xpediter through MVS."
"It's a modernized development portal and helps reduce the learning curve for younger people coming in to work on the platform,"
"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."
"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."
"My guess is this would have taken twice as long, or we would have had many more issues without using Xpediter."
"It's a great visibility tool for the developer team."
"Sentry allowed us to be more proactive and also enhance your app's observability, and its native integrations with JIRA and Slack saved us precious time."
"The solution is user-friendly."
"The stability is very good for Sentry and in general works well."
"The stability is very good for Sentry and in general works well."
"The product performs well."
"Real-time error tracking helps our Quality Assurance team easily identify the root causes of problems or bugs and promptly inform the developers about specific issues."
"Sentry provides excellent security when it comes to tables and databases."
 

Cons

"We have noticed that Topaz supported Eclipse environments are rather old. It would be nice if Topaz were compatible with the more current Eclipse releases."
"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."
"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."
"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?"
"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."
"One area for improvement with this product could be in providing clearer guidance and tools for disaster recovery planning and execution."
"The area for improvement is related to the testing tools that are available for unit testing or acceptance testing."
"It would be nice to have an audit trail to see what mainframe developers are using what."
"The settings for an administrator are complex."
"It would be nice if the product provided a map showing the users’ geographic location."
"I would like to see a role registration feature added."
"Lacks user metric tracking and the ability to create more dashboards."
"The log centralization and analysis could be improved in Sentry."
"One area where I think Sentry can improve is in the granularity of its alerting system, as it sometimes feels too sensitive or not customizable enough."
"One area where I think Sentry can improve is in the granularity of its alerting system, as it sometimes feels too sensitive or not customizable enough."
"Additional personalization and easier setup for capturing all the different application logs could be an area of improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"In general, Compuware tools are very competitive."
"The price point is great."
"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."
"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."
"I like the seat-based licensing much more than MSU-based licensing, and that the cost has been competitive."
"It has saved our developers time and effort when working on documentation, which is now more readable and fluent."
"I am currently using a self-hosted open version."
"We can adjust the price a little bit based on our needs."
"We are currently paying through Cloudera for the Sentry service."
"Currently, we are in the production phase of our project and we are on free plans to use Sentry. Once we go live we will have to be on a subscription-based plan."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
33%
Insurance Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
6%
Computer Software Company
15%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Large Enterprise16
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise3
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about BMC Data Management for IMS and DB2 on zOS?
BMC Data Management improved our data recovery process by simplifying it.
What needs improvement with BMC Data Management for IMS and DB2 on zOS?
One area for improvement with this product could be in providing clearer guidance and tools for disaster recovery planning and execution. As someone involved in managing infrastructure, understandi...
What advice do you have for others considering BMC Data Management for IMS and DB2 on zOS?
From my perspective as an infrastructure guy, the most valuable aspect of BMC's data management solutions was their ability to optimize CPU cycles, improving IMS performance without directly impact...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Sentry?
Sentry is very affordable. We spend less than $200 to $300 a month. Compared to New Relic, it provides the necessary features at a cheaper cost, especially since we moved infrastructure monitoring ...
What needs improvement with Sentry?
Right now, Sentry meets our needs and we have not encountered any bottlenecks. However, additional personalization and easier setup for capturing all the different application logs could be an area...
What is your primary use case for Sentry?
We use Sentry for application performance management and tracking bugs and issues in the application.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

File-AID, Data for Db2, Code Debug, Data Studio, Workbench for Eclipse, Code Pipeline
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Helvetia, The IMT Group, Hapag-Lloyd, Royal Bank of Canada, Chunghwa Telecom
Dropbox, Airbnb, Stripe, Uber
Find out what your peers are saying about BMC AMI DevX vs. Sentry and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
885,311 professionals have used our research since 2012.