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Knowage vs SQL Server comparison

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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 (34th), Reporting (22nd)
SQL Server
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
275
Ranking in other categories
Relational Databases Tools (1st), Database Management Systems (DBMS) (2nd)
 

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 1.0% compared to last year.
SQL Server, on the other hand, focuses on Relational Databases Tools, holds 10.3% mindshare, down 15.3% since last year.
Reporting Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Knowage2.0%
Tableau Enterprise13.7%
Microsoft Power BI12.7%
Other71.6%
Reporting
Relational Databases Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SQL Server10.3%
Oracle Database10.2%
IBM Db2 Database6.6%
Other72.9%
Relational Databases Tools
 

Featured Reviews

AM
Margin Assurance Analyst at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees
A stable open source suite for modern business analytics with a useful replication feature
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.
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

"Our customers really appreciate the self-service BI functionalities."
"Instead of just relying on emails to disperse our reports, having a central server to do this for us has helped our organization and has pushed us into a better place."
"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 concept of engines is quite powerful allowing the user to work with report authoring/provisioning tools of their choice."
"In terms of ROI, much better than any other solution when it offer full fledged features in open source, planned to have direct contact with SpagoBI for better support."
"Customer Service: Excellent."
"The most valuable features to us are application implementation, development, and analysis."
"The embedding feature is great."
"There is no lack of features."
"SQL Server is easy to manage."
"The solution is easy to use."
"Very stable relational database management system that offers ease of management, querying, and scaling. It has well-designed databases."
"The Azure SQL Server database requires almost zero maintenance and management."
"It is fairly easy to work with, and I like the high-availability options, like mirroring for example, and the high-availability groups."
"We've found it to basically be pretty problem-free."
"The basic features of the solution are excellent overall."
 

Cons

"When it comes to Knowage, it's a bit heavy, it's time-consuming sometimes, it's not very fast, and definitely not as fast as other business intelligence tools in terms of getting graphical reports."
"Tomcat configuration was tricky in earlier versions."
"There are additional features such as Data Integration, Data Visualization, MobileBI, Cloud BI, Data enrichment and massaging should be implemented in the next release."
"Unfortunately, many interesting features do not work when you are using a custom database for storing the metadata."
"I faced difficulties when using the email feature and documentation was scant."
"The dashboard components could be better. They could do a lot more."
"Yes, using Mobile and Desktop Editions, we would sometimes need to restart the service."
"The only challenge here is that it's a Java-based platform. It requires very high technical skills."
"Third-party services from Redgate should be built-in to it, like SQL Search."
"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."
"As SQL server could not support the number of connections we desired, we were forced to go with Oracle."
"But I don't have a hundred percent trust in Microsoft products."
"Performance could be better. But I don't know if it's a problem with my application or with my database."
"The only item which I can list is application failure during Integration Services debugging, when restarting a process flow. In a number of instances the solutions fails. I have not given this much thought and simply stop and start the debugging service rather than restarting."
"The areas that need improvement are with regards to the commercial aspect of the solution, the licensing cost could be reduced in order to help customers to adopt it."
"The pricing could be better."
 

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."
"You need to pay for the license. It most probably has per-core licensing."
"There is a subscription that needs to be purchased to use the solution."
"Some of the licensing are very expensive, such as the Enterprise license."
"I rate the product’s pricing a six out of ten."
"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."
"The product’s price depends on the specific server requirements."
"It's a bit expensive."
"The solution is on a pay-per-use pricing model."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
21%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
35%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Construction Company
6%
 

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

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
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, Plotly and others in Reporting. Updated: September 2026.
914,351 professionals have used our research since 2012.