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BMC AMI DevX vs CA IDMS comparison

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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 Database Development and Management
9th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
33
Ranking in other categories
Software Configuration Management (1st), Debugging (3rd), Mainframe Application Development (1st), Test Data Management (2nd), Mainframe Testing Tools (1st), Data Masking (3rd), AI Software Development (23rd)
CA IDMS
Ranking in Database Development and Management
29th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Database Development and Management category, the mindshare of BMC AMI DevX is 1.7%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of CA IDMS is 1.3%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Database Development and Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
BMC AMI DevX1.7%
CA IDMS1.3%
Other97.0%
Database Development and Management
 

Featured Reviews

Mitanshu Shrimali - PeerSpot reviewer
System Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Modern workflows have accelerated mainframe delivery and simplify understanding legacy code
BMC AMI DevX can be improved primarily by streamlining initial configuration and installation, simplifying advanced documentation, and enhancing UI/UX feature discoverability. While the platform successfully bridges modern IDEs such as VS Code with z/OS, user feedback highlights the need for simplifying setup and onboarding configuration. The initial installation and login process can be simplified. Although it feels complex initially, once completed, there is nothing to do with installation repeatedly since it is a one-time process. However, it is still somewhat complex. Basic tutorials are available that address teams implementing the configuration of multi-vendor tools and integration, but documentation gaps exist that frequently force heavy reliance on vendor support. Additionally, certain components across the workspace and diagnostic tools retain a legacy feel or hide powerful features behind deep menus, so UI/UX features can be simplified. Integrating with non-BMC enterprise testing or new CI/CD orchestrators can require custom engineering rather than native plug-and-play connectors. Optimizing large-scale performance is also important, as heavy resource consumption during deep runtime analysis for large-scale code mapping can impact performance over slower network connections for extremely dense application modules.
AS
ALiBS Solutions at ALiBS Solutions
Helps us to manage user profiles very quickly and in an assertive way
I would rate this solution 9 out of 10. I would advise that they should evaluate other possibilities because this is a very quickly changing environment and there are other possible providers that have good solutions. I would do some kind of test. I would test other possible solutions too and compare them.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"For bank applications, DB2 is the best on the market."
"Test data management capabilities are good."
"AI augmentation has specifically changed my day-to-day work or my team's workflow by speeding up the development and deployment process, because it helps in combining our development activities with known foundational models, thus reducing development time and increasing speed by at least 50 to 60%."
"I can quantify it as being ten times better than the prior tool, making this a much nicer and more polished version."
"With the use of ISPW, we were able to reduce our deployment time for specific applications by utilizing the auto-deploy features."
"The debugging is really the most important feature, enabling us to be able to step through."
"BMC AMI DevX tools have enabled me to save approximately 30 to 40% of the time due to its AI capabilities and seamless integration with my CI/CD pipelines."
"I think BMC AMI DevX has provided overall benefits and a positive impact because I've seen a lot of developers, not just the new developers, but even the old developers who have used the green screen their entire life, also developing with BMC AMI DevX and migrating into the newer screen."
"The solution is the community - a tightly knit group of experts who have been working on the product set for many years."
"We've been able to fine tune it over the years to get really good performance out of it, and maintain some database network support."
"Technical support is very good. They are very knowledgeable, very quick to respond, and very nice people, too.​"
"The most valuable feature is the performance of the database; it's very efficient at what it does, quite reliable, and provides us with a very stable platform that we've been running for many years."
"Stability is perfect! It is a really stable platform; it has been around for many years, and we trust it implicitly."
"The most useful feature is the governance feature, because it can show us and help us to manage user profiles very quickly and using it in assertive way."
 

Cons

"Their technical support could be better."
"I find it more cumbersome to use Topaz."
"It's a very complicated tool."
"I choose eight out of ten because of two frustrating parts: one is the navigation complexity sometimes, and the other is the configuration that gets erased over reboots or cleaning of the saved directory configs."
"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."
"It would be nice to have an audit trail to see what mainframe developers are using what."
"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."
"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'd like to see some of the installation, maintenance, and support functions simplified so that some of our younger, newer members can take advantage of the product and maintain it to the same standard that the older members have in the past."
"We have to use DB2 when we need more relational constructs, expanded inquiry and reporting; so it's not perfect in that regards."
"We need to make it much easier to support and maintain, because the skills required are quite specialized and we're not going to have people in the future who've got the necessary experience and knowledge."
"​I would like to see it made simpler to operate and maintain."
"Right now, it's not easy to start using this solution. You have to take long course and train people. It's not an easy path."
 

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."
"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."
"In general, Compuware tools are very competitive."
"The price point is great."
"Do not hold back on asking questions about the maintenance and continued support of the product."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
25%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Insurance Company
7%
Outsourcing Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise30
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for BMC Compuware Topaz Enterprise Data?
I do not have direct information about the setup cost and pricing and licensing. From the implementation perspective, I think the initial configuration can require some effort to align the product ...
What needs improvement with BMC AMI DevX?
I would suggest making the initial installation and configuration simpler, especially for new users. The login and startup experience could also be improved by reducing repeated login prompts and t...
What is your primary use case for BMC AMI DevX?
BMC AMI DevX is used primarily for mainframe application development and troubleshooting, particularly for COBOL and JCL. I use it to edit and navigate code, browse datasets, and submit jobs, and a...
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Comparisons

 

Also Known As

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

Overview

 

Sample Customers

NRB, Iberdrola, Consorzio Servizi Bancari 
Blue Hill Data Services Inc.
Find out what your peers are saying about BMC AMI DevX vs. CA IDMS and other solutions. Updated: November 2026.
920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.