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Knowage vs SQL Server comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

Knowage
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (33rd), Reporting (23rd)
SQL Server
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
274
Ranking in other categories
Relational Databases Tools (1st), Database Management Systems (DBMS) (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

Knowage and SQL Server aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Knowage is designed for Reporting and holds a mindshare of 2.0%, up 0.8% compared to last year.
SQL Server, on the other hand, focuses on Relational Databases Tools, holds 10.7% mindshare, down 17.3% since last year.
Reporting Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Knowage2.0%
Tableau Enterprise14.5%
Microsoft Power BI14.1%
Other69.4%
Reporting
Relational Databases Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SQL Server10.7%
Oracle Database10.9%
IBM Db2 Database6.3%
Other72.1%
Relational Databases Tools
 

Featured Reviews

BS
Software Engineer at syntegra
Open-source with great embedding capabilities but the dashboards could be better
I know the initial setup is pretty straightforward. It doesn't take a long time to deploy. Even on your own personal computer, when you want to try it out, it doesn't take too long to get it running. For the initial setup, I'd say it's maybe a four out of five in terms of how easy it is. You need to add these Java dependencies and so forth, which can be a bit boring, however, it's almost perfect. To deploy Knowage usually takes about a day. In terms of the implementation strategy, it's just following the instructions that they give us on the installation and then just knowing how to handle the process. Usually, there is a group of engineers who do that for us and manage the server itself. If a team is knowledgeable, then it doesn't take a long time. When you need a new instance, it's very quick. The implementation strategy is based on just following instructions on the installation process from Knowage. For deployment and maintenance, we need just maybe two people simply to monitor the traffic coming in. However, it's maintained by people who were doing other jobs like maintaining our other server. They just monitor the Knowage server and make sure that it's up and running and that there are no bugs. There are not too many bugs coming out from the debugger.
Peter Larsson - PeerSpot reviewer
Data Warehouse Lead at Resurs Bank AB (publ.)
Ledger and seamless integrations have strengthened trusted analytics and unified workloads
SQL Server's high availability and disaster recovery features work for supporting mission-critical applications, but there is much more to wish for. These features are not quite ready yet, although they do function. However, they could be significantly better. High availability and disaster recovery features should be improved in the next releases. I have noticed that everything could be improved or enhanced in the future, particularly temporal tables and window functions. Sometimes, I believe Microsoft releases features to stay ahead of competitors, but they do not make them feature-rich or feature-complete. They release something to be ahead of leaders and then seem to forget to maintain and upgrade them. I want Microsoft to pay more attention and be more mindful about the things they implement. It is fine to do a first release that works, but you cannot simply abandon it in the following years without service packs and improvements. You must continue to build on features rather than forgetting about them.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I would use SpagoBI if a company wants to use a free tool that has enough features."
"The embedding feature is great."
"Nice features available in SpagoBI compared with other open-source BI are Auditing, Collaborative BI, Query By Example, and User Profiling."
"Our customers really appreciate the self-service BI functionalities."
"It's very easy to get the historical reports you need based on the business requirements and this helps our executives for taking decisions."
"It's a great product. It has a lot more features than many other BI tools. You can get the most out of machine learning, the best connectivity to Python, and it cuts across enterprise sections."
"It improves sales and products, which motivates employees."
"The most valuable features to us are application implementation, development, and analysis."
"After reviewing a client's Microsoft SQL environment, I have been able to set up specific alerts and jobs in SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) to definitely show them where they are experiencing network latency, disk latency, memory pressure, etc., and I have done this type of performance review for over 20 clients in the last 5 years."
"It has enhanced our real time decision making capabilities."
"The solution can be deployed in a few minutes."
"We use it as part of our product, so it is helpful for us."
"SQL Server's most valuable features are its user-friendly nature and cost-effectiveness."
"SQL Server is very good, it can be used as a transactional database and used to support the data warehouse."
"It is beneficial in terms of what the business gains from it."
"Microsoft has one of the best supports."
 

Cons

"The dashboard components could be better. They could do a lot more."
"It would be better if more resources were available to help us learn how to use it. I wanted to use Knowage for a more extended period, but learning materials around the product were not really available and were not really straightforward."
"I faced difficulties when using the email feature and documentation was scant."
"Yes, using Mobile and Desktop Editions, we would sometimes need to restart the service."
"It would be better if more resources were available to help us learn how to use it. I wanted to use Knowage for a more extended period, but learning materials around the product were not really available and were not really straightforward. I've also seen inconsistencies between versions. For example, under the tools, especially in the cockpit, the way you create reports is now different. You will also find some configurations within a particular state, like a line chart, which differs from version to version. I think consistency is an essential feature in a product, especially for business intelligence products."
"The demands of some jobs would slow Spago and lock the site, preventing any other job from processing."
"I encountered a lot of issues when I tried to integrate the map in order to realize Intelligent Location Dashboards."
"We had stability issues."
"It's not scalable. It hinders your performance as it's slow in nature and you need experienced people to work on it."
"The solution has legacy issues when it comes to compatibility."
"Additional interfaces would be an improvement."
"While this is a reliable product, it has room for improvement."
"If there is flapping of Always-On database node, SQL Server will break the replication to the child nodes, and it requires manual intervention to restart replication."
"As we have faced problems with the solution in both the past and present, I feel it could be more stable."
"Performance could be improved."
"The scalability could be better."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Knowage is open-source, and an enterprise edition is also available."
"It allows the implementation of an effective reporting system using internal skills at a limited upfront cost."
"It comes with the bundle package that we have. We have Microsoft Volume Licensing, so we don't have to pay for it separately. It is a part of the package."
"We have an enterprise license, which we consider to be fine."
"I don't need a license for it as I will be migrating to Office 365."
"There is a license required for this solution and we pay monthly. The price is reasonable compared to other solutions."
"​We are a Microsoft shop, so we use Active Directory. That integrates well with this product, but we did look at Oracle. We also looked at IBM. This was the best price point for us for what we were getting.​"
"There is a subscription that needs to be purchased to use the solution."
"Cost is a major derivative for any organization. It has a reasonable cost value, and its cloud support is also better than others. Comparatively, Oracle can do the same things or is even better in certain areas, but it is expensive. The cost along with the support are the plus factors for SQL Server."
"Since we are a cloud-based company, there is AWS pricing on top of the SQL Server pricing. The Enterprise Edition can typically sell from around $1000 dollars a month, which is not cheap. Then, there is an additional one-time Windows cost, based on the code, which can go anywhere from $30,000 to $40,000 for the license."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
18%
University
11%
Marketing Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
40%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Comms Service Provider
5%
Computer Software Company
4%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business119
Midsize Enterprise60
Large Enterprise119
 

Questions from the Community

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Would you say the price of SQL Server is high compared to that of similar products?
SQL Server is fairly priced because it has various editions, depending on the number of users, servers, or core packs you are using. If you compare the product to others in this category, the price...
Has using SQL Server helped your organization in any way?
SQL Server has helped my organization through partitioning to distribute the workload, as it splits them up into smaller pieces so the machines can easily deal with it. However, this comes with a h...
Which authentication mode is best for SQL Server?
My company connects through SQL Server authentication. We have company Windows accounts, but we do not want to connect the two, out of security concerns and to keep things separated for our own pur...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

SpagoBI
Microsoft SQL Server, MSSQL, MS SQL
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

FIAT Group, Italian air navigation service provider, Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation, Telecom Italia, ASL Genovese, San Giovanni Battista University Hospital
Microsoft SQL Server is used by businesses in every industry, including Great Western Bank, Aviva, the Volvo Car Corporation, BMW, Samsung, Principality Building Society, Wellmark Blue Cross and Blue Shield, and the Catholic District School Board of Eastern Ontario.
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Salesforce, Domo and others in Reporting. Updated: May 2026.
896,510 professionals have used our research since 2012.