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BMC AMI DevX vs File Master Plus 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 Mainframe Testing Tools
1st
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
Software Configuration Management (1st), Debugging (6th), Database Development and Management (16th), Mainframe Application Development (1st), Test Data Management (5th), Data Masking (4th), AI Software Development (217th)
File Master Plus
Ranking in Mainframe Testing Tools
5th
Average Rating
8.6
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Mainframe Testing Tools category, the mindshare of BMC AMI DevX is 22.1%, down from 31.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of File Master Plus is 6.9%, up from 5.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Mainframe Testing Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
BMC AMI DevX22.1%
File Master Plus6.9%
Other71.0%
Mainframe Testing Tools
 

Featured Reviews

FI
Devops Engineer / Ispw Admin at a insurance company with 201-500 employees
Tight deployment controls have secured production and simplified complex release rollbacks
The best feature of BMC AMI DevX Code Pipeline that impresses me is the fallback functionality. The fallback functionality impresses me because when developers deploy large releases involving multiple components, such as COBOL programs, underlying copy books, and CICS modules, backing out changes would typically become a nightmare. With ISPW, developers can back out the entire release or entire package. If they deployed 100 components and want to back out everything, they can do so with one function and back out all components without worrying about backing out each individual component. They can back out the entire deployment set, which handles everything and brings them back to the previous versions. Developers can also selectively back out a subset of the deployed components. They also have the ability to revert to not just the most previous version but can go back several versions if they choose to do so. This gives them a lot of flexibility.
it_user847152 - PeerSpot reviewer
Director of Enterprise and Mainframe Infrastructure at a financial services firm with 51-200 employees
Eases manageability of data, gives us better efficiency on our batch run
I use it for doing final file maintenance It's easier to do basic tasks; ease of manageability of data. It also gives us better efficiency on our batch run and our day-to-day. In terms of meeting business challenges, it's more of a productivity tool. It makes our data easier to manage. Ease of…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"It speeds up processes, makes things easier, more efficient, and from a mainframe perspective, the way the mainframe is utilized has become that much easier."
"The most valuable feature of Topaz is Xpediter. It's more flexible than Xpediter through MVS."
"The visual ability to see potential downstream impacts to changes being made assists our developers in understanding the impact associated with their change."
"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."
"The Browse function and utilities are valuable; the solution is easy to use."
"We use it together with Grid Tools to mask IMS data."
"Provides ease of use, ease of manageability, and ease of managing DSN files."
"It also gives us better efficiency on our batch run and our day-to-day."
"Makes it quick to investigate/fix problems related to application data. Our business can get back to normal operations in short order."
"Makes it quick to investigate/fix problems related to application data, and our business can get back to normal operations in short order."
"CA File Master handles IMS data (together with Grid Tools), which we can use to mask/privatize our data then store on IMS databases."
 

Cons

"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."
"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?"
"One thing I would really like to see some improvement on is the promotion diagnostic messages."
"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."
"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."
"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 ISPW plugin could be improved to add some functionality which is already in ISPF panels and not in the plugin."
"​CA File Master cannot handle IMS Sysplex.​"
"For any change to CA File Master, we need a system programmer, which makes the change process very time consuming​."
"They need to keep coming out with new features, and new releases. There hasn't been a new release in a while."
"They need to keep coming out with new features, and new releases. There hasn't been a new release in a while."
"The setup is quite complex. We needed a system programmer for the initial setup."
"CA File Master cannot handle IMS Sysplex."
"It would be better if it took less CPU time."
"It would be better if it took less CPU time."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It has saved our developers time and effort when working on documentation, which is now more readable and fluent."
"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."
"The price point is great."
"In general, Compuware tools are very competitive."
"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."
"I like the seat-based licensing much more than MSU-based licensing, and that the cost has been competitive."
"The pricing is good value."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
33%
Insurance Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
5%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise16
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with BMC Compuware Topaz Enterprise Data?
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 ...
What is your primary use case for BMC Compuware Topaz Enterprise Data?
We do development for our customers and we use Topaz to do backend systems for some Latin American banks. It's for enterprise data. It runs on AWS. I'm working on performance testing to do batch pe...
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Earn 20 points
 

Also Known As

File-AID, Data for Db2, Code Debug, Data Studio, Workbench for Eclipse, Code Pipeline
CA File Master Plus
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Helvetia, The IMT Group, Hapag-Lloyd, Royal Bank of Canada, Chunghwa Telecom
Blue Hill Data Services
Find out what your peers are saying about BMC AMI DevX vs. File Master Plus and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,221 professionals have used our research since 2012.