MatchPoint – a first pass at deployment management?
I was browsing some Spanish-language software development blogs, and came across a reference to MatchPoint, a mainframe-oriented product from a Swiss company called CM First AG.
These guys don’t seem to have any more idea than most about how to manage database changes, but their product (or at least, the pdf of the glossy brochure) looks to have some really good tracking built in for deployments in both i-space and Windows-space. They claim that (for a small additional fee) you can track deployments all the way to the customer.
This is typical of a mainframe approach. The mainframe guys don’t have bajillions of PC customers, they have tens, or hundreds, or thousands of mainframe customers. Those are small enough numbers that it makes sense to talk about tracking them individually. It isn’t surprising, therefore, that mainframers have a more pragmatic approach to tracking deployments.
Thinking about how I could get my hands on a copy of MatchPoint (when I don’t own an IBM i-series) has led me to think some more about how to review a CM tool. I want to be able to write CM tool reviews, but I don’t want to write the kind of bunkum that you get from most 1500-word specials.
If you have any hands-on experience with MatchPoint, I’d love to hear from you — to get some real world feedback on their glossy brochure, if nothing else. And if you have ideas on how to review a CM tool, well, I’ll write something up in a separate post. Hold that thought.