RE: Comparison of the Big 3 - Change Management

Mike,

We just finished implementation of Aldon.  We also looked at Turnover.

In short, both have pluses and minuses.  For example, Aldon has better SQL
support (long names, SQL/External/Sourced UDFs and SPs) but Turnover may
have been somewhat stronger on the (iSeries) distribution side. Aldon's
green screen interface seemed a little cleaner and less confusing than
Turnovers.

Also important to note is that while I tried very hard to be impartial, I
was already very familiar with the green screen Aldon product.  If nothing
else, this fact I'm sure influenced by idea of "the right way" to do
something.

We didn't have as much time to evaluate the products as I would have liked.
Which was unfortunate, since we just found what I feel is a pretty big
limitation in Aldon's support of WDSc.  Aldon's WDSc plugin doesn't offer a
"Create" option for an object.  Which means that you have to use the
built-in WDSc compile commands.  This is a problem because one of the great
things about the green screen ACMS product is that when you do a create, it
makes sure your library lists are set correctly and that the object is
recreate with any custom properties (i.e. RSTDSP(*YES)  or PAGESIZE(66 80))
are set correctly.  It doesn't effect objects created during promotions,
since the promotion order is passed back to the green screen portion of the
product.  Just effects objects you want to test in your development
environment.  I've raised a pretty good stink about this and Aldon's
developers are looking at it.  My guess is it will be added pretty soon.

I'm pretty sure Turnover didn't have the same limitation.  However, it was
not something I was not specifically looking at as I really, really didn't
expect it to be missing.  To be fair, I think Aldon's limitation is a result
of working from within the SCM capabilities of Eclipse.  Turnovers plugin
does its own thing and doesn't try to use the SCM capabilities of Eclipse.


I'd recommend contacting both(all) vendors and getting evaluation copies of
their software to make your own comparisons.  You can also look at some of
the prior discussions in the archives.

Charles Wilt




> -----Original Message-----
> From: Mike Berman 
> Sent: Tuesday, June 29, 2004 8:33 AM
> To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
> Subject: Comparison of the Big 3 - Change Management
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Aldon, MKS - Implementor, &  SoftLanding are the 3 largest 
> software change management companies. Has anyone recently 
> looked into and purchased one. What are if any differences 
> between them. 
> 
> Lastly, are there any other companies to consider?
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Mike
> 
> 
>               
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