Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

BMC AMI DevX vs SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 11, 2025

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 Database Development and Management
20th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
Software Configuration Management (1st), Debugging (8th), Mainframe Application Development (1st), Test Data Management (7th), Mainframe Testing Tools (1st), Data Masking (8th)
SolarWinds Database Perform...
Ranking in Database Development and Management
4th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Database Development and Management category, the mindshare of BMC AMI DevX is 1.3%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer is 6.6%, down from 8.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Database Development and Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer6.6%
BMC AMI DevX1.3%
Other92.1%
Database Development and Management
 

Featured Reviews

Brian Westerman - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Ravi Khanchandani - PeerSpot reviewer
Excels in identifying various database performance issues, including long-running queries, wait times, deadlocks, and other performance-related issues.
There's room for improvement on the dashboarding side. Specifically, the health dashboard of the database instances. Some of my customers deal with a large number of monitored database instances. It would be beneficial if they could have a single dashboard for instances, for example, from number one to thirty. This way, I could monitor all these 30 instances and quickly identify any performance issues on any of them. The dashboarding capability definitely needs improvement. In future releases, there should be custom reports and dashboards are crucial. Not everyone needs to see the same page every time. For example, if I'm interested in MYSQL databases, I should have a view that focuses only on MYSQL databases. Customization like this, where users can tailor their dashboards to specific needs, is essential for improving the product.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature of Topaz is Xpediter. It's more flexible than Xpediter through MVS."
"Test data management capabilities are good."
"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."
"It's a modernized development portal and helps reduce the learning curve for younger people coming in to work on the platform,"
"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."
"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."
"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 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."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the support for older databases and the ability to manage them in a centralized dashboard."
"SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer helped us locate the performance issues quickly."
"The initial setup is pretty straightforward."
"The platform solves and prevents delays in receiving answers from databases."
"In IT, problems often occur in areas such as applications, web interfaces, or databases. The tool allows users to easily determine the root cause of these issues, whether they stem from the network layer, database layer, or elsewhere."
"SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer can help us identify issues we cannot see manually."
"The most valuable feature of SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer is anomaly detection. It alerts you when things outside the norm are happening, and the feature that analyzes your indexes informs you if you have wide or overlapping indexes. It also helps identify SQL query bottlenecks, letting you know if something is taking longer than usual, if a query plan has changed, and if you need to update statistics. In terms of usage, it is straightforward to use, learn and understand. The patching process is smooth and explains each feature, including links to external resources for further reading."
"SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer's most valuable features include the notification of consuming the SQL queries, collecting data, and notifying about managing space and tables."
 

Cons

"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?"
"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."
"The solution could be improved by being better integrated with the open world. In the next release, I would like to have the ability to work in an open environment whilst remaining integrated with the legacy environment."
"It often doesn't play well with other plugins in the environment."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer should be easy to implement and it should have more facilities to make it better."
"The areas where it currently lags are in reporting and dashboarding. The reports and dashboards are somewhat static, and we cannot create custom dashboards for specific customer needs."
"Technical support for this solution needs to be improved."
"One area where the tool could improve is by adding support for additional databases. For instance, supporting newer databases like Couchbase or MongoDB would be beneficial."
"There is room for improvement with the pricing of the platform."
"SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer should include more details on how everything works."
"It is capable, but I don't believe it has the right value matrix. It also depends on the budget of the company."
"SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer should provide customization options allowing users to add different columns."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 general, Compuware tools are very competitive."
"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 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."
"There are no extra costs for maintenance or using the solution's support."
"I don't remember the exact licensing cost for SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer, but it's within the range of $2,000 to $3,000 a year."
"Customers need to pay for the subscription-based license annually."
"It could be less expensive."
"The pricing is fairly reasonable, and it becomes more cost-effective with larger volumes of instances."
"SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer is a little bit expensive."
"The pricing of the solution is average."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Database Development and Management solutions are best for your needs.
867,676 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
37%
Insurance Company
12%
Computer Software Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
14%
Healthcare Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Large Enterprise16
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise6
 

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...
What do you like most about SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer?
In IT, problems often occur in areas such as applications, web interfaces, or databases. The tool allows users to easily determine the root cause of these issues, whether they stem from the network...
What needs improvement with SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer?
One area where the tool could improve is by adding support for additional databases. For instance, supporting newer databases like Couchbase or MongoDB would be beneficial.
What is your primary use case for SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer?
We use SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer for performance monitoring, tuning, and troubleshooting performance issues. It's mainly related to performance and the database community. Database a...
 

Also Known As

File-AID, Data for Db2, Code Debug, Data Studio, Workbench for Eclipse, Code Pipeline
Confio, SolarWinds DPA, Ignite8
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Helvetia, The IMT Group, Hapag-Lloyd, Royal Bank of Canada, Chunghwa Telecom
GSI Commerce, Liquid Digital Media, ProLogis, Indiana University
Find out what your peers are saying about Nutanix, Oracle, Quest Software and others in Database Development and Management. Updated: September 2025.
867,676 professionals have used our research since 2012.