BMC AMI DevX vs. HeadSpin vs. Rocket DevOps

I love these tools! However, my company has not yet transitioned from SCLM to a modern repository, and this is causing most of our developers to remain within TSO for all their development. It's been a slow adoption up to this point, but we are moving toward more modernization this year and next, so with any luck, we'll see usage pick up. Success depends on the speed at which your management is willing to move.

Incentivized

We have been using HeadSpin for our web and mobile application testing. It is an easy-to-use solution that provides detailed and in-depth analytics from the testing results. We also get a wide range of live networks and devices to perform the testing from HeadSpin. It has an inbuilt artificial intelligence engine that helps us to get real-time scenarios simulated, which is very helpful for finding performance issues and improving the overall quality of the applications.

Rocket Aldon is perfect for simple changes to traditional IBM i development using RPGLE, CL, and DDS. It is great for finding related objects that are referenced in many locations and helping recompile all of these objects. However, Aldon has a particularly hard time with SQL views. For some reason, it is determined to lock every table related to a view even though this is not required by the operating system. Whenever one view references another view, you are always in danger of losing a view permanently if you didn't check it out and promote it. To clarify, imagine you created a view CUSTOMER_INFO. Then you make another view called CUSTOMER_SHIPMENTS that joins the CUSTOMER_INFO to a shipping table. If you ever change CUSTOMER_INFO and then promote it, there is a good chance that Aldon will delete the CUSTOMER_SHIPMENTS view and you will not get a single warning. It doesn't happen every time but when it does you are going to have a real mess on your hands.

Incentivized

• The tool I use is fairly intuitive. It doesn't take long to be using it full time.
• Changing the layout/view is fairly easy. This allows it to fit individual preferences.
• It is helpful to be able to view specific windows in full screen. Usually, I have it set up to view multiple windows, but sometimes, I just want to view one window in full-screen mode.

Incentivized

• Keep track of each browser we have tested and when we lastly updated them.
• Remove any deprecated code or plugins that may cause issues with other browsers.
• Add browser information to our site’s meta tags so that the site displays correctly in different browsers.
• Test our website on all browsers to ensure compatibility.

• Allows flexibility for user groups
• Scripting for releasing of code
• Ease of comparing code versions within the tool

Incentivized

• Download source code plug-in on Azure DevOps to allow downloading prod version even if it's not in the assignment.
• Publishing Test Results on Azure DevOps from Total Test plugin
• Integration with DevEnterprise in Workbench and GenAI capabilities for enhance code analysis (Accross multiple programs/applications)

Incentivized

• UI needs to be improved
• Graphs on the dashboard are a bit laggy and need detailing for a better understanding of the user

Incentivized

• SQL object promotions
• User interface
• Incomplete error checking
• Fragmented promotion logs

Incentivized

This is a very good range of tools that we use daily to maintain our programs

Incentivized

Based on current integration with our release process, we will need to keep this for the future.

Incentivized

It's really simple to use either in batch mode or CICS mode. It is very convinient for debugging purpose.

Incentivized

The tool is very reliable and we have had very few cases where we have had to contact support.

Incentivized

With one exception, we did not observe any slowdown in development activity when using the AMI DEVX Code DEBug tool.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

Support is hit and miss. Sometimes they give some great assistance and sometimes they are no help at all. It always seems like they can't replicate the problem but then they never try to get on our system to do deeper research. It's kind of frustrating dealing with them. Also, the website isn't that helpful.

Incentivized

The learning phase is relatively easy to implement.

Incentivized

The installation teams for these products have never complained about any difficulties during the integration of this range of tools into our IT system.

Incentivized

The names may have changed over the years, but anyone who has been around for a while will recognize them. For Software Configuration Management, I have used TSO/ISPF/SCLM, Panvalet, ChangeMan, Librarian, Endevor, and now Code Pipeline. All of them met the basic requirements. All of them had their advantages and disadvantages. Code Pipeline, however, stands head and shoulders above the rest in simplicity, completeness, effectiveness, efficiency, and elegance.

Incentivized

Though LambdaTest was cheaper, it did not offer the deal devices and we wanted to be 100% sure that our app offers a perfect experience to all users. Simulators and emulators are not the technology we wanted to rely on.

Aldon provides needed functions for our current implementations and legacy systems. As we move toward modernization, we are going to look at alternatives from reviewing cost, integration capabilities and functionality

Incentivized

• Possitive impact. It is main product suite to enable devops in the mainframe applications team. All developers use these on day-to-day work.
• Negative impact: Recent usability issues caused disappointment in the application teams. It became hard motivate the development community to increase usage.

Incentivized

• Simplified the approach to test the mobile application on multiple devices from different vendors. This helped us to ensure the stability of the application in different environments.
• In-depth analysis to understand the loopholes in the application design function. This helped us to improve the application design and overall user experience.

Incentivized

• Software promotion is much easier and doesn't require custom coding.
• Developers can work collaboratively with less overlap.
• Developers can find objects faster and research code more thoroughly.

Incentivized