When selecting a vendor, support is important for the people that support the platforms; and the stability of the platform is important.

If a colleague at another company who was looking at IDMS as a brand new installation, I’d say take classes at Framingham, join the IUA. Talk to peers who use IDMS. See how it would fit. It's a legacy product, so it's out there for things that have been in place for 20-30 years.

Explore the use and the performance of the system using the SQL option, as technical advice. In terms of stability advice, I would say call on the support of CA for the installation and setup of the product. Also, do not hold back on asking questions about the maintenance and continued support of the product.

I'd say engage with your vendor. Make sure that the solution that you're choosing has a good support community, both inside the organization, and with a self-supporting community outside the organization.

It's not something we would chose to put new work on these days because there are much more modern solutions out there that are far easier to manage.

I don't think anybody would be actively developing anything new on IDMS these days, but if they've got it then it's worth sticking with it.

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.