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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

"The most valuable feature of SpagoBI is that it is open source and 100% free without limits."
"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 can't name the features the way the Knowage community calls them because I still don't know the lingo. However, I can describe them. I like the ability to join more than one report, set all fields on one end, and replicate that on the other reports. I like that a lot. I think it's one of the features that got me using Knowage. They have tables, and I like that too. They took SQL scripts and many other scripts and enabled them to even correlate with Python. That's also one of the best things about Knowage. You could also decide to get information per user role, and this is also a feature that I like in Knowage."
"It improves sales and products, which motivates employees."
"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."
"Unified interface, a lot of tools for BI, easy configuration, standalone SDK."
"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 am satisfied with the product in general given what the company invested in it, which was just our time."
"I have complete warehouse logic inside stored procedure and it works like a charm."
"It provides the ability to create an end-to-end automated BI platform through data management and provisioning, transformation and publication."
"The performance of the SQL Server is very good."
"The ability to see tables, reviews, and custom script options is good."
"It's a very complete product, we've found it to basically be pretty problem-free, the integration with other products has always been quite good, and the security of the product has never given us any issues."
"We used SQL Server to store all of our lab data on the database, with a front-end application that needed SQL in the background for archiving all the laboratory data."
"We primarily use it for our two-tier and three-tier applications."
"I like the availability group functionality. We are setting up more clusters using availability groups. The enterprise licensing or Software Assurance makes it a little bit cheaper as well. It is nice to have that read-only copy for reporting and everything else."
 

Cons

"Many things need to be improved, most of all robustness."
"There are additional features such as Data Integration, Data Visualization, MobileBI, Cloud BI, Data enrichment and massaging should be implemented in the next release."
"Tomcat configuration was tricky in earlier versions."
"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."
"I faced difficulties when using the email feature and documentation was scant."
"Development of SpagoBI has now been moved to Knowage. Users interested in further developments of the platform will have to look there."
"We are not happy with the poor graphic user interface. It looks a bit old and sometimes it is not properly user friendly."
"There should be more security updates for the product."
"SQL Server could improve by enhancing the integration abilities, adding more inbuilt data security features, and simplifying the maintenance."
"I would appreciate a dark theme for SQL Server Management Studio and ability to add databases with TDE enabled into availability groups."
"This is a downside of enterprise Microsoft products."
"It can be better if it enables the use of AI functions."
"The solution is very expensive."
"Besides that, SQL Server has become very expensive like Oracle."
"The solution could offer better integration with other solutions - specifically Microsoft."
 

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."
"The price of SQL Server could be better in the African market. The licensing model needs to be improved, it is confusing."
"SQL Server is a cost-effective solution for a small database."
"Some of our clients purchase the license and others do not, they use Express SQL Server."
"It is expensive, but you get what you pay for."
"Pricing is a bit on the higher side."
"We have an enterprise license, which we consider to be fine."
"The setup cost is high, but it will return every penny."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
23%
University
9%
Marketing Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
39%
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

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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.
902,495 professionals have used our research since 2012.