BMC Compuware Topaz Workbench Reviews

Topaz Workbench provides an intuitive interface that enables developers of all experience levels to initiate Compuware’s industry-leading developer tools, Abend-AID, File-AID, Hiperstation, Xpediter and Strobe, as well as non-Compuware products and distributed solutions in the same environment.

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BMC Compuware Topaz Workbench is the #1 ranked solution in top Mainframe Application Development solutions. PeerSpot users give BMC Compuware Topaz Workbench an average rating of 7.2 out of 10. BMC Compuware Topaz Workbench is most commonly compared to Bonita: BMC Compuware Topaz Workbench vs Bonita. BMC Compuware Topaz Workbench is popular among the large enterprise segment, accounting for 84% of users researching this solution on PeerSpot. The top industry researching this solution are professionals from a financial services firm, accounting for 32% of all views.

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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.

At this time I do not know of additional improvements from my perspective. Over the last year, Compuware has made major improvements to the JES Explorer, which used to be the biggest negative. There are some tools in ISPF that are not available outside of ISPF right now, things the programmers may need to look at. They still have to go to the green screen for a few things. Since we have the free version of Topaz, we do not have access to the new 3270 emulator that can handle this situation in Eclipse. We have noticed that Topaz supported Eclipse environments are rather old. It would be nice if Topaz were compatible with the more current Eclipse releases. The current version of Eclipse supported by Topaz is Photon.

I would look for more cooperation between the vendors and using Eclipse the way Eclipse is meant to be used. Topaz Workbench often doesn't play well with other plugins in the environment. 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 would like to see the features include more integration or help customers when working with Jenkins. It would be nice to have an audit trail to see what mainframe developers are using what. We are trying to get more people to use the product at the moment. I would like to expand its usage because it is a good product for development.

BMC Compuware Topaz Workbench mindshare

As of September 2024, the mindshare of BMC Compuware Topaz Workbench in the Mainframe Application Development category stands at 30.2%, up from 23.2% compared to the previous year, according to calculations based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

• Key Impressions
• ROI And Pricing

Valuable Features

• "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 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."
• "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."

Room for Improvement

• "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."
• "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."
• "It would be nice to have an audit trail to see what mainframe developers are using what."

Pricing

• "It has saved our developers time and effort when working on documentation, which is now more readable and fluent."
• "In general, Compuware tools are very competitive."
• "The only thing I would mention related to the licensing and/or the pricing, is that they have some visualization features in there that are licensed by concurrent users. We're starting to trip up on that. We're looking to probably increase the number of concurrent licenses that we have. But those types of licensing strategies, where they license by concurrent users or the number of seats is confusing for some people. They don't understand why it works sometimes and doesn't work other times."

These insights are based on the in-depth reviews provided by peers to help you make a better buying decision.