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Good CMS for traditional IBM i development
July 23, 2021

Good CMS for traditional IBM i development

Stewart Locklear | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Rocket Aldon

We use Rocket Aldon for managing IBM i development in SQL, CL, RPG, etc. This helps us manage our changes and makes sure we don't overlook related objects when making changes. It is used only by IT. Rocket Aldon helps us keep a history of software changes and is useful for classifying the reason for the change.
  • Software Change Management
  • IBM i development
  • Object relationships
  • SQL object promotions
  • User interface
  • Incomplete error checking
  • Fragmented promotion logs
  • Change Management
  • Promotion history
  • Object relationships
  • 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.
There are not a lot of CMS solutions for the IBM i server. Midrange Dynamics MDCMS is definitely one to consider. It seems very similar to Aldon Rocket and has a lot more functionality. I haven't used it but I have been to a demo and it looks promising. It seems a lot more intuitive and the promotions seem easier. However, that was a demo environment and even then it crashed so there's that to consider....

Do you think Rocket DevOps delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Rocket DevOps's feature set?

No

Did Rocket DevOps live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Rocket DevOps go as expected?

No

Would you buy Rocket DevOps again?

No

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.

Rocket Aldon Support

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.
ProsCons
Knowledgeable team
Kept well informed
Support cares about my success
Quick Initial Response
Poor followup
Need to explain problems multiple times
We paid for normal support because we are a small shop and we don't have a lot of pressing issues. The other thing is that we know how to get the software into production outside of Aldon when we have to get something done. Then we wait for support to help us clean up the mess later.
Yes - We reported bugs related to SQL objects and nothing has ever been done to address the problem. Some SQL objects just seem too complex for Aldon Rocket to handle. We sometimes have to promote these outside of Aldon altogether. It can be quite concerning when we have to make changes to these objects later.
We really haven't had a truly exception support occasion. We have had a few good, experienced technicians who gave us very good support but nothing ever happened that made me think that this was truly exceptional.