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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 (32nd), 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 10.6% mindshare, down 17.0% since last year.
Reporting Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Knowage2.0%
Tableau Enterprise14.1%
Microsoft Power BI13.2%
Other70.7%
Reporting
Relational Databases Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SQL Server10.6%
Oracle Database10.5%
IBM Db2 Database6.6%
Other72.3%
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

"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."
"I would use SpagoBI if a company wants to use a free tool that has enough features."
"We can easily do our own customizations."
"It improves sales and products, which motivates employees."
"Our customers really appreciate the self-service BI functionalities."
"It's very easy to get the historical reports you need based on the business requirements and this helps our executives for taking decisions."
"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."
"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."
"The scalability is very good."
"The support from Microsoft has been good."
"From my point of view, using SQL Server 2017 and 2019 is very good."
"The stability of the product is very good; it is reliable, there are no bugs or glitches, it does not crash or freeze, and it does not give us any trouble."
"We found it to be quite scalable."
"Many developers like SQL Server."
"SQL Server is very good, it can be used as a transactional database and used to support the data warehouse. Additionally, the ANSI-compliant satisfies our database properties."
"I use this solution as our data warehouse; we use the reports, data analysis, and for connecting our databases to multiple resources."
 

Cons

"We are not happy with the poor graphic user interface. It looks a bit old and sometimes it is not properly user friendly."
"We had stability issues."
"As all software and especially the open-source ones have always something that can work better, in this case, SpagoBI is slightly difficult to implement."
"The only challenge here is that it's a Java-based platform. It requires very high technical skills."
"Tomcat configuration was tricky in earlier versions."
"Yes, using Mobile and Desktop Editions, we would sometimes need to restart the service."
"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."
"Development of SpagoBI has now been moved to Knowage. Users interested in further developments of the platform will have to look there."
"Occasionally the performance, as good as it is, is a bit off. We sometimes experience memory spiking. If they could maybe fix that aspect of the solution, that would be quite helpful for our organization."
"Performance could be better. But I don't know if it's a problem with my application or with my database."
"There are scalability limitations and this is why we are evaluating cloud alternatives."
"The pricing in general could be better."
"The scalability is adequate but could improve."
"Reloading all the data in a database can cause potential data loss especially when the size of database is large."
"The solution could offer better integration with other solutions - specifically Microsoft."
"I have no choice, our customer choose MS SQL."
 

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."
"Its licensing is yearly. There are no additional costs. There is only the subscription license."
"Depending upon your usage, you can use the pay-as-you-go model for a short period of time. For longer projects, we can opt for one-year or a three-year license."
"Synapse is a bit costly. If I compare it with different databases, I think it's a reasonable price"
"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."
"​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.​"
"It costs a lot."
"With recent releases, the Standard Edition (cheaper) SKU has some of the earlier version Enterprise features. SQL Express has some limitations."
"The licensing is on an annual basis."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
20%
University
9%
Marketing Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
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: May 2026.
899,052 professionals have used our research since 2012.