No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

Knowage vs SQL Server comparison

Why PeerSpot?
 

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 (32nd), 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 1.1% compared to last year.
SQL Server, on the other hand, focuses on Relational Databases Tools, holds 10.3% mindshare, down 15.1% since last year.
Reporting Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Knowage2.0%
Tableau Enterprise13.5%
Microsoft Power BI12.6%
Other71.9%
Reporting
Relational Databases Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SQL Server10.3%
Oracle Database10.3%
IBM Db2 Database6.6%
Other72.8%
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

"Nice features available in SpagoBI compared with other open-source BI are Auditing, Collaborative BI, Query By Example, and User Profiling."
"Customer Service: Excellent."
"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."
"The concept of engines is quite powerful allowing the user to work with report authoring/provisioning tools of their choice."
"I am satisfied with the product in general given what the company invested in it, which was just our time."
"The most valuable feature of SpagoBI is that it is open source and 100% free without limits."
"SpagoBI makes delivering reports to our clients very easy."
"The most valuable features to us are application implementation, development, and analysis."
"I find query optimization to be highly valuable for data management. Additionally, drag-and-drop query creation greatly facilitates data management tasks."
"We don't have any issues with the scalability of SQL Server."
"Reliability, transaction management, and its higher limits for storage and table management are the most valuable features for us."
"It is easy to use for a BI specialist."
"The setup process is straightforward."
"The product can scale if a company needs it to."
"I use SQL Server daily for data analysis using its database capabilities and reporting via SSAS, and it is easy to use for a BI specialist."
"This solution has proven stability and operational power."
 

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."
"We expected the community to be bigger than what it currently is."
"The support is very meager: We had to break our heads to figure out everything"
"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."
"Unfortunately, many interesting features do not work when you are using a custom database for storing the metadata."
"Tomcat configuration was tricky in earlier versions."
"Yes, using Mobile and Desktop Editions, we would sometimes need to restart the service."
"Many things need to be improved, most of all robustness."
"Access validation rules and expressions need improvement while converting into SQL Server."
"It's like pulling teeth, especially if you have had experience using a tool, like Oracle, that is just not that painful."
"Analysis services have a lot of room for improvement. Basically, manageability on the available tools. They should have improved them already. They are not very efficient. My main headache is with the analysis service, and it would be really good if Microsoft developed some additional tools that are more user-friendly to manage the analysis. This is both from the perspective of management, users' roles, and performance analysis. My main wish for SQL Server would be that management tools for analysis services grow and mature a bit."
"The only people that can use it directly are developers."
"I have no choice, our customer choose MS SQL."
"The remote access aspect needs to be improved in terms of security."
"I find the solution not to be scalable."
"Better integration with other platforms would be an improvement."
 

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."
"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."
"You need to pay for the license. It most probably has per-core licensing."
"The setup cost is high, but it will return every penny."
"We are on an annual enterprise license for the solution and the cost of the license could be reduced."
"It's a bit expensive."
"The product is expensive."
"On a scale of one to ten, when one is cheap and ten is an expensive solution, I rate the product price as seven. The product is expensive."
"Although it comes with a cost, using the most recent version is highly advisable, since it would ensure a certain measure of bug fixes and stability. The sole issue would involve the cost, as this is expensive."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Reporting solutions are best for your needs.
915,817 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
20%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
35%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
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.
915,817 professionals have used our research since 2012.