Initially, it was fairly complicated. Topaz leverages the functionality from other products quite a bit, and the setup issues were attributed to those other products: things that we didn't have in place, we didn't have installed, we didn't have configured. I spent a lot of time going through the features of Topaz that were not working, trying to find which product it was that was missing a configuration step or a setup step. That took me the better part of six to eight months to get it all ironed out.

It was fairly complicated to get all of the features and functions working. As far as Topaz itself goes, they're just built-in and expected to work, but as I said, those features are really attributed to other products, the setup and configuration that's required for those products. But since we've gone through those initial setups, doing upgrades and doing maintenance has been really straightforward. There has really not been a lot to do in the configuration and setup portions.

The initial setup is very simple.  Again, since we are combining multiple products from different vendors, we have to be careful about the version of Eclipse and the order we install the product into eclipse.  Sometimes this takes a few tries to get it right.

For deployment, zip up the eclipse program files and a default workspace.  These files are sent to our desktop management group who deploy the software using Big Fix.

We also recommend that the developers back up their workspace to a network drive on a regular basis so that they can recover if there workspace gets or they make a change and want to back it out.

The initial setup of Eclipse was straightforward. However, the problems were more complex because of all the third-party competing vendor products. So, getting it set up and installed was easy, but getting it rolled out was a bit difficult because of some of the configurations going to people's work spaces.

We didn't roll it out the way a normal Eclipse works. We rolled out select PT Plugins, then uninstalled and reinstalled. The last one we did, we had to rollout the binary and a new set of Eclipse Workspace because of some configuration issues. This made it more complex. I don't know if it was an issue because of Topaz Workbench or an issue between the third-party vendors plugins not working well together. So, I can't say if it was Topaz Workbench,

Setup is a little bit more complex than some products, only because Compuware changed the way it does the installation. It has an overall product manager now, and everything else is managed underneath that. So the installation is a little bit different than it used to be, and that has complicated things a little bit. But hopefully, in the long run, it will make things a little bit easier, so it won't be a separate installation for every little thing. It will be one overarching installation. Time will tell.

I was not the primary one to install it. We do have to go through our corporate installation procedures, and that's probably more of a challenge than working with the install itself.

It was probably of moderate complexity. It installed a little bit differently than other mainframe products with its web servers and things like that. I don't really know how to rate it complexity-wise.

The setup is done through our tech support group, and we are then given the platform to run. The tech support group is not dedicated to Topaz and, while there is one contact within that group, they are stressed and the resources available for Topaz are not as complete as they could be or should be. So installation is hit or miss - whatever Compuware drops down and can help install and attach.

It wasn't complicated. They did come in and give training and it pretty much worked okay.