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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 (34th), Reporting (21st)
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) (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 0.9% compared to last year.
SQL Server, on the other hand, focuses on Relational Databases Tools, holds 10.4% mindshare, down 16.2% since last year.
Reporting Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Knowage2.0%
Tableau Enterprise13.9%
Microsoft Power BI12.9%
Other71.2%
Reporting
Relational Databases Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SQL Server10.4%
Oracle Database10.4%
IBM Db2 Database6.6%
Other72.6%
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

"We can easily do our own customizations."
"Nice features available in SpagoBI compared with other open-source BI are Auditing, Collaborative BI, Query By Example, and User Profiling."
"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."
"Our customers really appreciate the self-service BI functionalities."
"Unified interface, a lot of tools for BI, easy configuration, standalone SDK."
"It's very easy to get the historical reports you need based on the business requirements and this helps our executives for taking decisions."
"I would use SpagoBI if a company wants to use a free tool that has enough features."
"The most valuable feature of SpagoBI is that it is open source and 100% free without limits."
"We use the solution both on the cloud and on-premises and we have been pleased with its capabilities overall."
"The solution is stable."
"However, Microsoft SQL servers are a very trusted product."
"One of the best features of SQL Server is the efficient retrieval of information."
"The stability of the solution is quite good; we don't have issues with it, it doesn't crash or freeze, we don't experience bugs or glitches, and it's reliable."
"I like that it's a cloud solution, is simple to set up, and is simple to use."
"The best feature in SQL Server is the CDC mechanism for adding data incrementally."
"If you know how to work with the product and leverage its various features and possibilities, then you can achieve great scalability."
 

Cons

"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."
"We had stability issues."
"We are not happy with the poor graphic user interface. It looks a bit old and sometimes it is not properly user friendly."
"Yes, using Mobile and Desktop Editions, we would sometimes need to restart the service."
"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."
"Unfortunately, many interesting features do not work when you are using a custom database for storing the metadata."
"Many things need to be improved, most of all robustness."
"The demands of some jobs would slow Spago and lock the site, preventing any other job from processing."
"It's not scalable. It hinders your performance as it's slow in nature and you need experienced people to work on it."
"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."
"The solution is lacking a compound index for comparing values."
"I would say that people should know how to get a SQL setup in place since it might be an area where they lack when it comes to the solution."
"Access validation rules and expressions need improvement while converting into SQL Server."
"SQL Server could be more robust than one of its competitors."
"Technical support could be better."
"Third-party services from Redgate should be built-in to it, like SQL Search."
 

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."
"The price of SQL Server could be better in the African market. The licensing model needs to be improved, it is confusing."
"The enterprise-level license agreement is very complicated."
"Our customers do pay license fees for the MS SQL Server but the Rabbit is free, as it is open-source software."
"​It has the easiest licensing."
"The price could be better. Aside from the basic features, if you need any additional features that can be extended, for example, if you want to connect with the heterogeneous databases, they are being managed as separate services and not included in the package. If you manage a database in Azure, it's not providing SFS and reporting services. However, on-premises, if you purchase the SQL Server license, it includes SFIS and SFRS services. If you take Postgre SQL and MySQL, they provide almost all the same features even though they are both open source databases."
"We didn't have any licensing costs for SQL Server."
"SQL Server is a cost-effective solution for a small database."
"We're looking at alternative solutions because we think Microsoft's licensing costs have been expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
25%
Manufacturing Company
7%
University
7%
Marketing Services Firm
7%
Financial Services Firm
37%
Construction Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Outsourcing 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 Enterprise118
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
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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, Plotly and others in Reporting. Updated: July 2026.
908,745 professionals have used our research since 2012.