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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 (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) (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 10.5% mindshare, down 16.4% since last year.
Reporting Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Knowage2.0%
Tableau Enterprise14.6%
Microsoft Power BI13.5%
Other69.9%
Reporting
Relational Databases Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SQL Server10.5%
Oracle Database10.4%
IBM Db2 Database6.6%
Other72.5%
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

"Customer Service: Excellent."
"Nice features available in SpagoBI compared with other open-source BI are Auditing, Collaborative BI, Query By Example, and User Profiling."
"The most valuable feature of SpagoBI is that it is open source and 100% free without limits."
"Unified interface, a lot of tools for BI, easy configuration, standalone SDK."
"I would use SpagoBI if a company wants to use a free tool that has enough features."
"The embedding feature is great."
"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."
"Excel integration is one of its most valuable features."
"The product has very good online documentation that can be used for troubleshooting."
"The best feature in SQL Server is the CDC mechanism for adding data incrementally."
"This is an excellent solution when it comes to databases."
"In summary, this is a good product and I recommend it."
"SQL Server's most valuable features are its user-friendly nature and cost-effectiveness."
"The most valuable features of this solution are easy queries and straightforward programming for beginners."
"The backup and recovery allow us to easily access previous 10 to 15 years of data, which is only possible using SQL Server due to its uniqueness in handling large data sets."
 

Cons

"Tomcat configuration was tricky in earlier versions."
"Development of SpagoBI has now been moved to Knowage. Users interested in further developments of the platform will have to look there."
"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 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."
"I faced difficulties when using the email feature and documentation was scant."
"There are additional features such as Data Integration, Data Visualization, MobileBI, Cloud BI, Data enrichment and massaging should be implemented in the next release."
"Many things need to be improved, most of all robustness."
"One stability issue I encountered was the deadlocking between calls to the same resources (tables, etc.). That was solved by row versioning."
"While we have many options in Enterprise, it's expensive for most companies."
"Technical support could be better."
"I would like to see the integration with other platforms improved in the future."
"The price could be better. It costs a lot, and competing databases like Postgres are free."
"Setting up some of the more complex systems could be simpler."
"One thing I don't like about SQL Server is the way they've set up security with users and groups. It just doesn't seem that intuitive to me. Adding some more explanatory information might help some."
"Improvements to the indexing, columnstore indexing, and high availability groups are good improvements for future versions."
 

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."
"There is no licensing cost for SQL Server."
"The enterprise-level license agreement is very complicated."
"The price of the solution could be reduced, it is expensive."
"​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.​"
"We are on an annual enterprise license for the solution and the cost of the license could be reduced."
"I rate the product’s pricing a six out of ten."
"There is a license required to use the solution and I am satisfied."
"We have had to purchase the Enterprise version to the tune of a few hundred thousand dollars, which is just ridiculous."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
23%
Manufacturing Company
8%
University
8%
Marketing Services Firm
8%
Financial Services Firm
38%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Construction Company
6%
Comms Service Provider
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 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.
904,680 professionals have used our research since 2012.