BMC AMI DevX Reviews

Our developers use the tool for application development.

It's helping onboard application developers who might be new to the mainframe environment. Whether they're interns or global development resources, they might be new to the mainframe environment, and giving them this Eclipse tool to use, instead of having to learn the traditional mainframe interfaces, has helped them with that onboarding process.

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 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.

We have not encountered any stability issues so far. We've gone through two upgrades and we haven't had any issues with the upgrades. If anything, I'm having a hard time keeping up. They put out releases quarterly, and sometimes those quarterly releases have some really nice features, but the process for me to bring that software in, test it, and then roll it out to our end-users, makes it difficult for me to keep up with the rate at which they're putting out releases. But we haven't had any stability problems with it at all.

We did initially encounter some scalability issues. When we first started bringing it in at the end of 2016 and the beginning of 2017, its memory requirements were pretty substantial, and some of our developers - the machines that they were working on at the time - were running into memory issues. It would run very slowly or they would have to restart or it would hang. But since we've upgraded our developer machines, at end-of service - our routine process - and they've gotten additional memory on their machines, we haven't had that problem anymore.

As far as the software vendors that I work with go, Compuware has some of the best support, in terms of listening to customer requests and accepting enhancements to the product and the like. We haven't had many issues with Topaz Workbench where I had to open problem tickets. The problems that we discover in Topaz Workbench are usually attributed to some other product. But their support is some of the best that I deal with.

Topaz is the only Eclipse-based developer solution that we've had at UPS.

Initially, it was fairly complicated. Topaz leverages the functionality from other products quite a bit, and the setup issues were attributed to those other products: things that we didn't have in place, we didn't have installed, we didn't have configured. I spent a lot of time going through the features of Topaz that were not working, trying to find which product it was that was missing a configuration step or a setup step. That took me the better part of six to eight months to get it all ironed out.

It was fairly complicated to get all of the features and functions working. As far as Topaz itself goes, they're just built-in and expected to work, but as I said, those features are really attributed to other products, the setup and configuration that's required for those products. But since we've gone through those initial setups, doing upgrades and doing maintenance has been really straightforward. There has really not been a lot to do in the configuration and setup portions.

Topaz Workbench is included in our Enterprise Agreement. They've been great as far as letting us deploy it to as many users as we want.

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, are confusing for some people. They don't understand why it works sometimes and doesn't work other times.

It would be much easier if it was licensed a little differently than that. To try and explain to my end-users why certain features don't work some of the time but other times they do, it's a little confusing, and it's because of that concurrent user license strategy.

We didn't evaluate other products before choosing this product. The product was included in an Enterprise Agreement. When it was included in our agreement, we were not shopping for an Eclipse-based product like this. When we did need one, it was the one that we had and I think we got lucky, because I have seen competitors' products and I think Topaz from Compuware is far above and beyond its competitors.

Pay attention to the installation of those back-end products. Topaz leverages the features and functions of a lot of mainframe-based products, so you really have to make sure that those other Compuware products are installed and that they're configured properly. You can spend a lot of time trying to research why features of Topaz are not working, and it turns out that it's really a feature of another product that you don't have installed or configured properly.

I rate it as an eight out of ten. The only reason I wouldn't rate it as a ten is because of those initial setup difficulties that we had and because the system requirements for the tool were, initially, pretty lofty. It's a pretty memory-extensive application to run on your workstation. But I think that's common to a lot of Eclipse-based products like this. I don't think it's necessarily a Topaz issue, it's more of an Eclipse issue. The lighter weight they can make it, the better it is for companies like us which have to push it out to hundreds of users, potentially.

In 2018, we executed a migration from an LCM product (ASG: Allen Software Group company) to an ISPW in order to manage our mainframe programs (mostly Cobol, few C, and ASM).

• We use ISPW for SCM and ALM, built and deployed from the development environment to the production environment on IBM z/OS.

• ISPW can be used on both Eclipse Neon 4.6.3 and ISPF panels.
  

• In our company, developers are using ISPW in Eclipse to have the benefit of an IDE and to use others plugins from Compuware Topaz solution or other providers we have.

• ISPW administrators and production teams use ISPW on both Eclipse and ISPF panels depending on the tasks they have to manage (a part of the administrative task is not available in Eclipse plugin).   

• It helps us with the changing of SCM and ALM products, and also to change the life cycle including two branches.

Of course, it's still a recent migration, so we are still in progress to improve our organization and use of the product. 

• 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.

• The ISPW plugin could be improved to add some functionality which is already in ISPF panels and not in the plugin. 
• It could also be improved to better help the developer manage merging versions in the life cycle (even if he can already use Eclipse merge view), and to have prompts on warnings and errors during generation and deployment, followed by a pop-up and before the promotion task.  

The customer service of Compuware and its technical support is at a really standard level.

We used LCM: Life Cycle Manager (ASG: Allen Software Group). We changed production because the support and evolution of the product were in risk and because it was not available in Eclipse IDE. 

We carried out the migration and implementation with a migration team of the vendor, and an in-house team. Technical support from Compuware was very helpful and useful during the implementation and migration.

We had a quick presentation of Endevor (CA) and ChangeMan (ex Serena Software), and we did a proof of concept using Dimensions CM with Serena Software (now Micro Focus).

We use it with mainframe. I'm a mainframe systems programmer, so we install the Compuware product onto the mainframe for our end users.

It speeds up processes, makes things easier, more efficient. From a mainframe perspective, the way the mainframe is utilized has become that much easier.

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.

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.

From an installation perspective, the simpler the installation of the product, the better. I always feel like there is room for improvement on installing. I've noticed, occasionally, installation steps could just be wrong, and that's very difficult for us. It extends the time it takes us to install the product. When we install it with the directions provided, and then it doesn't work, we have to open a ticket to find out why it doesn't work, only to find out that the documentation was missing a step. That is something that always needs to be reflected on, and has room for improvement.

We haven't really encountered stability issues. The only time we have experienced issues thus far is that new releases will occasionally have a bug or two that have to be worked out. But once everything gets in, it's usually pretty stable.

We haven't encountered any issues with scalability.

Tech support has been good. We usually don't have any issues time-wise. People get back to us pretty quickly. The questions that we have had have been answered, and the problems that we've had have been fixed. I don't see any issues with support. I'm not the primary support person but my colleague who is hasn't told me of any issues that she has experienced either.

Setup is a little bit more complex than some products, only because Compuware changed the way it does the installation. It has an overall product manager now, and everything else is managed underneath that. So the installation is a little bit different than it used to be, and that has complicated things a little bit. But hopefully, in the long run, it will make things a little bit easier, so it won't be a separate installation for every little thing. It will be one overarching installation. Time will tell.

As always, with any product, I compare 

• the ease of use
• how easy it is to install
• the usefulness to the user
• how simple is it for them to understand
  

While we install the product, we don't necessarily use it. However, we have to provide support to the user who is using it. Our group supports 40 different products, so they need to be very easy to use, and I need to be able to look things up because I'm obviously not going to be an expert on 40 products. Installation manuals and documentation are crucial. That goes hand in hand with a company's support site. With 40 different products and however many different vendors, everybody has a different support site. Some are really easy to use and really great, and some are not at all easy to use. That is another piece that plays into my opinion of products.

I would go with an eight out of 10 when rating this product. Obviously, it's not perfection, but it's very useful, relatively easy to install and maintain, and we've had a good relationship with support personnel. That all goes hand in hand to say that it's a good product, it's worth the trouble of installing and maintaining.

• 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.

From a development perspective, it allowed me to validate every line of my logic if necessary, most times in one pass. In other words, Xpediter allowed me to churn out quality code more quickly than I would have been able to without it. Better quality means less rework, so reduced support costs. Being able to deploy code faster means I could get more projects done, which translated in to an increase in revenue.

From a support perspective, Xpediter helps you to figure out where things are going awry without having to be an expert in the business function that is being performed.

Initial setup can be tricky in some cases. Also, there are some space limits that we would hit every now and then while processing internal tables, so we would have to decrease occurs clauses and re-test. These situations could have been related to how the shop installed Xpediter ... it might not be an issue with the tool itself.

I used Xpediter for about two-and-a-half years.

I wasn’t involved in the deployment or installation of the product, I just used it to troubleshoot programs.

I have not encountered any stability issues.

I have not encountered any scalability issues.

I never had to contact customer service.

I never had to contact technical support.

The previous solution was to add displays to programs and see what they told me. I went away from that method and went to Xpediter as I found myself making multiple passes to figure out what was going on. In other words, I’d add displays just to find out that I had to add displays to more code, not a good cycle to be caught up in.

Initial setup for a user was pretty straightforward, and that was without documentation. The biggest issue always revolved around the size and attributes of the DDIO file.

The product was already installed when I started working there, so I don’t have any insight on this.

I don’t have any solid numbers on this, but I can tell you that three people were able to write a financial accounting, posting, interest and service charging system in three months and it had VERY few technical errors from the mainframe perspective. My guess is this would have taken twice as long, or we would have had many more issues without using Xpediter.

I would say that if you are still caught up in an iterative troubleshooting mode, the value of the product is WELL worth the money, especially in complex environments. When I think about how much time is wasted in those iterative efforts (and from multiple people, testers, QA, project management, change management along with programming), I would say our missed opportunity cost would offset the annual cost of the product in about three months.

Yes, we evaluated other products but I will not mention which ones.

Don’t discount the value of the product, even if you feel your build cycles and support are ‘good’. There’s no reason to NOT see what Xpediter can do for your programming staff and projects.