We performed a comparison between BMC Compuware Topaz Workbench and Gen based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about BMC, IBM, Broadcom and others in Mainframe Application Development."The smart editor helps because it will code-complete for me. I can see code working a lot faster and I'm able to get things coded in less time."
"It helps our staff work by speeding up their documentation process."
"It's a modernized development portal and helps reduce the learning curve for younger people coming in to work on the platform,"
"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."
"We can develop in parallel today on ISPF, but it's giving us the advantage of the newer interface into the mainframe programming languages that younger programmers can use and are familiar with, rather than using the ISPF green screen."
"The most valuable feature of Topaz is Xpediter. It's more flexible than Xpediter through MVS."
"From a user perspective, the GUIs make it easier for people to see and interact with files on the mainframe."
"You can easily manage the code, and you can easily find other changes, other group changes, other models, other components."
"Full packets, enable you to develop software and systems using these packets, and implement software on the mainframe side and the client side. You can use the same packets, so it's very powerful."
"CA Gen has provided us web development capability."
"It's not as intuitive as it should be. In terms of navigation, there is a large training curve for using it. For a millennial it might be better, if they're used to Eclipse. But coming from a non-Eclipse environment and using Eclipse, though I have experience with Eclipse, it might be cumbersome."
"I'm waiting to see what 19.2 for Topaz looks like, but I have a problem with the JES Explorer right now. It limits you to a certain prefix for job names and there are some groups that have multiple prefixes that they'd like to see all at once in their job names, because of how they work in a group. And they can't see that in the JES Explorer."
"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."
"It would be nice to have an audit trail to see what mainframe developers are using what."
"It often doesn't play well with other plugins in the environment."
"The ability to edit source code that has special characters is limited. The ability to incorporate or convert REXX into macros that are usable under the Topaz software is not there. And the REXX macros that I have developed over 40 years of work are useless, so I have a toolbox I can't use or deploy using the Topaz technology, while I can use it under MVS."
"It would be good if the vendors would work together or at least have some collaboration between them, so they would know what would work and what wouldn't work. Right now, the way things are working, they're relying on the customer to make everything work."
"I'm always looking for improvement in things like the documentation, to make things a little bit easier and simpler to understand, a place where people can go to troubleshoot issues."
"The product needs to be well marketed, then adopted. I am not seeing many customers using the product."
"I cannot use DB2 specifications, DB2 comments, easily."
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BMC Compuware Topaz Workbench is ranked 1st in Mainframe Application Development while Gen is ranked 4th in Mainframe Application Development. BMC Compuware Topaz Workbench is rated 7.2, while Gen is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of BMC Compuware Topaz Workbench writes "File editing/browsing and the debugging features help onboard developers who are new to the mainframe environment". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Gen writes "Rapid development software tool. Mature solution to make changes and put them in production". BMC Compuware Topaz Workbench is most compared with IBM Rational Developer for z Systems, BMC Compuware Xpediter and Bonita, whereas Gen is most compared with IBM Rational Developer for z Systems.
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