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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

"The embedding feature is great."
"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."
"The most valuable features to us are application implementation, development, and analysis."
"SpagoBI makes delivering reports to our clients very easy."
"The concept of engines is quite powerful allowing the user to work with report authoring/provisioning tools of their choice."
"We can easily do our own customizations."
"It's very easy to get the historical reports you need based on the business requirements and this helps our executives for taking decisions."
"Unified interface, a lot of tools for BI, easy configuration, standalone SDK."
"This solution is available at a much lower price point than Oracle, and it includes 99% of the same feature functionality, so I'd say it knocks ROI out of the park."
"Microsoft has one of the best supports."
"There was an online system in which we had about 2500 requests to the DB per second, and after switching to SQL Server, AlwaysOn, and Snapshot, and configuring and tinkering, the handling capacity we measured increased to about 5000 requests per second, while the time decreased to 0.5 seconds per request."
"I believe Always On is the most valuable feature. It's also easy to use and not very tricky."
"Managing database is very good."
"The solution is very easy to use. It's intuitive and easy to navigate. Overall, it's a straightforward product."
"It has always been reliable and consistent, providing tremendous functionality for many years."
"SQL Server is similar to other Microsoft products, such as BI, they are easy to use. You do not need to have an expensive BD to maintain them. All the useful intuitive features you find in Microsoft solutions you will find in SQL Server."
 

Cons

"Tomcat configuration was tricky in earlier versions."
"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."
"I faced difficulties when using the email feature and documentation was scant."
"Unfortunately, many interesting features do not work when you are using a custom database for storing the metadata."
"We had stability issues."
"The demands of some jobs would slow Spago and lock the site, preventing any other job from processing."
"Yes, using Mobile and Desktop Editions, we would sometimes need to restart the service."
"We are not happy with the poor graphic user interface. It looks a bit old and sometimes it is not properly user friendly."
"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."
"The reporting services of the solution (SSRS and now Power BI) are the less valuable items of the SQL Server suite."
"I would like the SQL Server to be able to provide cloud support. We use the solution with a Korean provider supporting only MySQL rather than Microsoft SQL Server, which would be preferable and cheaper. This would prevent us from having to pay for troubleshooting and hosting the server."
"Since this is a relational order system, scalability has a limit."
"When transferring data from the SQL Server to Excel, the data types are not copied correctly. This issue might be associated with the formatting of the data types."
"Performance could be better. But I don't know if it's a problem with my application or with my database."
"There are a lot of improvements in the cloud space about which we open a case with Microsoft every now and then. These improvements are not in terms of features or functionality. They are more related to their own compatibility or connectivity on which they keep on working to improve the product."
"The solution’s pricing and integration could be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It allows the implementation of an effective reporting system using internal skills at a limited upfront cost."
"Knowage is open-source, and an enterprise edition is also available."
"I know the SQL Server pricing model, I believe, is based on CPU cores that your database server has, but I don't know what the solution's prices are though."
"The price of the solution could be cheaper."
"Licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis."
"The free version is cumbersome to use and maintain. But $5000 for a licence is more expense than the benefit I would get from a licensed version. A licence might be worth the price to simplify management and speed up searches."
"There is a license required for servers and for the POS we use the free version. The free version allows you to have tables and a total database size of approximately 10 GB, which is enough for our requirements."
"SQL Server is a cost-effective solution for a small database."
"SQL Server's pricing has proven satisfactory for our market range."
"I believe the licensing to be on an annual basis."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
19%
University
11%
Marketing Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
40%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Comms Service Provider
4%
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: April 2026.
895,891 professionals have used our research since 2012.