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BMC AMI DevX vs WhereScape RED 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)
WhereScape RED
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
Data Integration (46th)
 

Mindshare comparison

BMC AMI DevX and WhereScape RED 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.
WhereScape RED, on the other hand, focuses on Data Integration, holds 0.9% mindshare, up 0.9% 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 Integration Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
WhereScape RED0.9%
SSIS4.0%
Informatica Intelligent Data Management Cloud (IDMC)3.7%
Other91.4%
Data Integration
 

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.
reviewer1618884 - PeerSpot reviewer
BI Analyst DW Architect at a mining and metals company with 10,001+ employees
Quick to set up, flexible, and stable
The scheduling part I don't like due to the fact that it allows you to schedule as a parent and child and other things, however, the error trackability has to be a little more user-friendly. It's also not user-friendly in the sense that it loads all the jobs and there are not enough filters so that it doesn't need to load everything. If the job fails, you don't get any type of alert or email. It would be ideal if there was some sort of automated alert message. Technical support isn't the best. It would be ideal if we understood how to do it in a card exception regarding exclusion, where the card is captured separately rather than filling the whole process on the data inbound side. Certain workloads like this are organized in such a way where you seem to be doubling the work as opposed to streamlining the process.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"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."
"The most valuable feature of Topaz is Xpediter. It's more flexible than Xpediter through MVS."
"Once we got the configurations and deployment rolled out, it was very stable. I haven't had any major issues with Eclipse or the Topaz Workbench plugins."
"It's a modernized development portal and helps reduce the learning curve for younger people coming in to work on the platform,"
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Data transformations and rollups are easy to accomplish."
"WhereScape's deployment package is a fantastic feature. The application allows for selecting specific objects that you would like to deploy from one environment to another rather than deploying the entire database."
"Naturally produces a way to easily debug your DW data solutions."
"WhereScape is really helpful in terms of architecture data. Everything is one of automation. Two people can do thousands of tables in one day or two. It saves a lot of time."
"I found the initial setup very easy."
"WhereScape RED has improved our business's ability to generate needed reporting without requiring a large team of developers to manually code all of the necessary plumbing."
"I like the data vault implementations."
"This is a fantastically robust DW tool that will make you at least 10 times faster in producing a DW."
 

Cons

"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"It would be nice to have an audit trail to see what mainframe developers are using what."
"One area for improvement with this product could be in providing clearer guidance and tools for disaster recovery planning and execution."
"It often doesn't play well with other plugins in the environment."
"Technical support has gotten better over the years, though there's always room for improvement."
"Project-based searching of data objects in the data warehouse browser needs to be improved."
"The solution can be a little more user-friendly on enterprise-level where people use it."
"No support for change data capture or delta detection - that must be custom coded ."
"They need a more robust support center. It has been a bit difficult to find solutions to problems that are out-of-the-box."
"Jobs cannot be deleted via the deployment package. When deploying from dev to QA or production, a job has to be retired. The job has to be manually removed from the target environment."
"Improve the object renaming ability (it works, but it could be more automated)."
"Technical support isn't the best."
"It could use a tool to diagnose what is missing from the environment for WhereScape to install successfully."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I like the seat-based licensing much more than MSU-based licensing, and that the cost has been 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."
"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."
"Speed to market of a warehouse solution at a relatively inexpensive price point."
"Factor in the price of specialized consulting who know this product. They're hard to find and expensive."
"ROI is at least 10 times."
"Our company purchased a corporate unlimited license."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
34%
Insurance Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Healthcare Company
9%
Insurance Company
8%
Computer Software 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 Business6
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise11
 

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...
Ask a question
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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
British American Tobacco, Cornell University, Allianz Benelux, Finnair, Solarwinds and many more.
Find out what your peers are saying about BMC AMI DevX vs. WhereScape RED and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,114 professionals have used our research since 2012.