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BMC AMI DevX vs IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 15, 2026

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

BMC AMI DevX
Ranking in Database Development and Management
11th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
32
Ranking in other categories
Software Configuration Management (1st), Debugging (2nd), Mainframe Application Development (1st), Test Data Management (4th), Mainframe Testing Tools (1st), Data Masking (3rd), AI Software Development (30th)
IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manage...
Ranking in Database Development and Management
13th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
Event Monitoring (12th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2026, in the Database Development and Management category, the mindshare of BMC AMI DevX is 1.7%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server is 3.0%, down from 4.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Database Development and Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
BMC AMI DevX1.7%
IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server3.0%
Other95.3%
Database Development and Management
 

Featured Reviews

Mitanshu Shrimali - PeerSpot reviewer
System Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Modern workflows have accelerated mainframe delivery and simplify understanding legacy code
BMC AMI DevX can be improved primarily by streamlining initial configuration and installation, simplifying advanced documentation, and enhancing UI/UX feature discoverability. While the platform successfully bridges modern IDEs such as VS Code with z/OS, user feedback highlights the need for simplifying setup and onboarding configuration. The initial installation and login process can be simplified. Although it feels complex initially, once completed, there is nothing to do with installation repeatedly since it is a one-time process. However, it is still somewhat complex. Basic tutorials are available that address teams implementing the configuration of multi-vendor tools and integration, but documentation gaps exist that frequently force heavy reliance on vendor support. Additionally, certain components across the workspace and diagnostic tools retain a legacy feel or hide powerful features behind deep menus, so UI/UX features can be simplified. Integrating with non-BMC enterprise testing or new CI/CD orchestrators can require custom engineering rather than native plug-and-play connectors. Optimizing large-scale performance is also important, as heavy resource consumption during deep runtime analysis for large-scale code mapping can impact performance over slower network connections for extremely dense application modules.
reviewer2317098 - PeerSpot reviewer
Assistant at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Offers effective monitoring of resources but lacks the ability to connect to an AWS instance and write custom queries.
We use it mainly for monitoring, including CPU, memory, and disk space, and for troubleshooting purposes We've set up alerts to notify us when performance deviates from the baseline we've configured for each resource. So, whenever that happens, we get an alert and can investigate immediately. So,…

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"I like that Compuware File-AID can actually map out control sections within load modules, or, as they're now known, program objects."
"BMC AMI DevX tools have positively affected my developers' productivity and efficiency compared to prior solutions, with an estimated increase of almost thirty-three percent in overall productivity."
"The debugging is really the most important feature, enabling us to be able to step through."
"The plugin ISPW integrated into Eclipse is a really valuable functionality for developers who already use it."
"BMC AMI DevX tools have noticeably impacted our developers' productivity and efficiency."
"It's a modernized development portal and helps reduce the learning curve for younger people coming in to work on the platform,"
"For bank applications, DB2 is the best on the market."
"The clearest measurable impact is faster troubleshooting and faster debugging, with debugging time reduced by 20 to 30% because I can step through COBOL programs, check variable values, and identify failing statements more efficiently."
"SQL monitoring time has been dramatically reduced and our IT Infrastructure team has improved SQL maintenance and monitoring knowledge over time just by using SQL DM."
"Overall, it has allowed us to do more with database management and run more databases on a given server, because we're able to isolate issues quicker and take the proactive steps necessary to correct them."
"The ability to go back and look at historical data is the most valuable feature."
"Baselining our SQL Servers has made a huge impact."
"There are several monitoring tools, but IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager is actually better than other competitors."
"One of the things that it is used for is to detect anything that could possibly cause our systems not to function well, and it has helped us to determine that before anything has actually happened."
"We're able to diagnose issues prior to their actually becoming issues. Without the alerting, we wouldn't have a clue as to what was going to happen. With the alerting, it gives us a heads-up that a specific threshold has been met, and we need to take specific action."
"Ability to identify bottlenecks, deadlocks and slow running queries and run monthly and daily reports."
 

Cons

"I find it more cumbersome to use Topaz."
"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."
"I would recommend some additional functionalities for debugging production failures, as while BMC AMI DevX already offers features like Ab-end AID for automatic detection and analysis of failures, a more comprehensible approach would be much appreciated."
"An area for improvement in BMC AMI DevX would be the user interface and overall usability, which can feel a little complex for new users coming from modern development tools."
"Their technical support could be better."
"One thing I would really like to see some improvement on is the promotion diagnostic messages. It invokes utilities "under the covers" to copy components, and it does not echo back any of the error messages from those utilities."
"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's a very complicated tool."
"Reporting and overall analysis of data gathered from SQL Server."
"They can improve checking the status of the CPU, memory, and IO utilization from each task."
"One thing I'd like to see is the ability to view the execution plan and have the system automatically recommend potential query optimizations, especially at the query level."
"I would absolutely love to create customized dashboards but, unfortunately, they don't provide me the information that I need to create the report. The report I need is the detail or the transaction detail that's happening on those Snapshots. I'd like to be able to go back through time and search for things. I don't have that functionality, which is very disappointing. That's pretty bad and frustrating because I could query it and find out so much information about what's hitting my environment and when, but instead, they want control over it and to not give me that information. So it's encrypted. I can't pull it out and that is really bothersome."
"We don't find that it helps us with performance monitoring and diagnostics. We find that SentryOne does that better. Also, in terms of alerts, we had to customize them dramatically so that we didn't get alerted on every little thing."
"The initial setup gives too many user rights to the server, so you have to put a user that is part administrator's group - that's the preferred way - on each server, which is kind of a risk. You want to do least privilege and you're not doing that."
"I'm going to do an upgrade which may resolve my issues, but one area for improvement is its ability to handle the amount of data that we collect with it. We're likely one of the largest installations, with over 300 servers being collected with this product, and sometimes there are gaps. That would really be my only concern, in terms of how the data is collected and stored, for consistency."
"It would helpful if SQL DM could mark when changes are made within the program."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"In general, Compuware tools are very competitive."
"I like the seat-based licensing much more than MSU-based licensing, and that the cost has been competitive."
"The price point is great."
"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."
"In terms of pricing, there isn't an extra charge for the parts of it we use. It comes with the licenses we purchased for other products, so no complaints there. The licensing is built in with the other products that you purchase from Compuware."
"It has saved our developers time and effort when working on documentation, which is now more readable and fluent."
"The pricing is reasonable, it's comparable with the competitors."
"We were upgraded to Premium Support without their actually asking us, when we were quoted. Then I asked for Standard Support and that they had to re-quote us that. But they don't do that by default. They upcharge you by default, which I didn't think was very nice, without even asking."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
27%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Insurance Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Outsourcing Company
15%
Construction Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise30
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise4
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for BMC Compuware Topaz Enterprise Data?
My understanding is that BMC AMI DevX is an enterprise product with custom licensing, so pricing is typically negotiated based on factors such as the modules purchased, organization size, and usage...
What needs improvement with BMC AMI DevX?
BMC AMI DevX is a strong platform, but there are a few areas where it could improve, such as simplifying the initial installation and configuration, especially for first-time users. It could also i...
What is your primary use case for BMC AMI DevX?
My main use case for BMC AMI DevX is to work with COBOL and JCL development on IBM. I mainly use it for editing, browsing data sets, submitting jobs, and debugging applications. I appreciate the Ec...
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Also Known As

File-AID, Data for Db2, Code Debug, Data Studio, Workbench for Eclipse, Code Pipeline
IDERA SQL DM, IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

NRB, Iberdrola, Consorzio Servizi Bancari 
Padnos, University of Notre Dame, D4, Infeon Technologies, Chevron, LC Waikiki, Sisters of Saint Francis Health Services, Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, CVE, Colorado State University, St. Charles, Chaucer PLC, 1-800-Flowers, Ancoris, Money Management, National Opinion Research Center, California Department of Health, Plexus; Aviva, Burlington Northern Santa Fe, CBS, Comcast, Google, Merck, Regions Financial, Schneider Electric, Tata Consultancy Services, Verizon Communications, Zurich Financial Services
Find out what your peers are saying about BMC AMI DevX vs. IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
917,433 professionals have used our research since 2012.