Likelihood to Recommend It's pretty good at creating an extract of a whole table, but not the best at grabbing all related tables in my experience. Pretty intuitive on setting up your test data categories. I also really like that it can either run via ISPF or via Topaz which was included with our purchase.
Read full review We started to use GitLab for hosting git source code repositories of our projects only but slowly we started to use it to store container images, packages, dependency proxy as well infrastucture registry and it is now well suited for Continuous Integration in our projects, It wasn't that good in Continuous Deployment before 12.0 version but after 12.0 it is amazingly good for Continuous Deployment as well since it keeps deployment information in a well organized manner which can be configure in ci yaml configuration.
Read full review Pros Extract/load data from one DB or table to another masking the data for testing. Compare extracts against each other to ensure good baselines. Read full review GitLab excels in managing code versions, allowing easy tracking of changes, branch management, and merging contributions. It helps maintain code stability and reliability, saving time and effort in the development or research workflow. Powerful code review features, enabling collaboration and feedback among team members. Robust project management features, including issue tracking, kanban boards, and milestones. Read full review Cons I find it more obtuse to use than IBM Optim. Related tables are difficult to incorporate. Read full review CI variables management is sometimes hard to use, for example, with File type variables. The scope of each variable is also hard to guess. Access Token: there are too many types (Personal, Project, global..), and it is hard to identify the scope and where it comes from once created. Runners: auto-scaled runners are for the moment hard to put in place, and monitoring is not easy. Read full review Likelihood to Renew Gitlab is the best in its segment. They have a free version, they have open-source software, they provide a good service with their SaaS product, they are a fully-remote company since the beginning (which means they are fully distributed and have forward-thinking IMO). I would certainly recommend them to everyone.
Read full review Usability I find it easy to use, I haven't had to do the integration work, so that's why it is a 9/10, cause I can't speak to how easy that part was or the initial set up, but day to day use is great!
Read full review Support Rating Support has been amazing compared to
Optim . Further, new features are very regular with File-AID - I can't remember the last time
Optim had a significant update. File-AID support is very receptive to feature requests and reported bugs, including sending out hotfixes quickly.
Read full review At this point, I do not have much experience with Gitlab support as I have never had to engage them. They have documentation that is helpful, not quite as extensive as other documentation, but helpful nonetheless. They also seem to be relatively responsive on social media platforms (twitter) and really thrived when
GitHub was acquired by Microsoft
Read full review Alternatives Considered Optim is more user friendly in how it operates, in my opinion. It's less obtuse to figure out how to extract and mask the data required compared to File-AID. Further,
Optim is easier to gather related tables, by far. I do prefer using File-AID via the Topaz GUI much more than using
Optim via its GUI. Finally, I personally believe that File-AID is significantly faster to run than
Optim - this could be a configuration issue.
Read full review GitLab is easily the preferred tool when it comes to versioning and source control. With other tools the UI often feels outdated and clunky leading to inefficiency and confusion. With some of the sleeker tools such as
GitKraken , while the aesthetic is pleasing, the experience is plagued by a lack of support, lack of optional plugins, and a plethora of bugs that cause unnecessary legwork to resolve. GitLab is the best of both aesthetic and functionality
Read full review Return on Investment Saves time creating production like data for testing. Keeps that data safe from developers and need-to-know only. Read full review We were able to streamline our project's codebase which made us very organised and laid out a proper plan for development. Our deployment and infra pipelines are well structured now making our process 10x faster. We are more focused into project building rather infra, as infra is totally on autopilot mode. Which has enabled us to grow our ROI by records. Read full review ScreenShots