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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 embedding feature is great."
"I would use SpagoBI if a company wants to use a free tool that has enough features."
"SpagoBI makes delivering reports to our clients very easy."
"It's very easy to get the historical reports you need based on the business requirements and this helps our executives for taking decisions."
"Nice features available in SpagoBI compared with other open-source BI are Auditing, Collaborative BI, Query By Example, and User Profiling."
"The most valuable features to us are application implementation, development, and analysis."
"It improves sales and products, which motivates employees."
"The most valuable feature of SpagoBI is that it is open source and 100% free without limits."
"The most valuable feature of SQL Server is the performance."
"The most valuable aspect of the solution is that it's integrated with the Visual Studio and also with Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio. It's a tool they have and it's quite easy to use and understand. It's the interface for programming for SQL Services."
"I believe Always On is the most valuable feature. It's also easy to use and not very tricky."
"The initial setup is easy, flawless."
"The most valuable feature of SQL Server is that it is easy to set up."
"SQL Server is both scalable and stable."
"Microsoft has one of the best supports."
"Very pleasing and satisfying experience."
 

Cons

"The demands of some jobs would slow Spago and lock the site, preventing any other job from processing."
"Development of SpagoBI has now been moved to Knowage. Users interested in further developments of the platform will have to look there."
"We expected the community to be bigger than what it currently is."
"The only challenge here is that it's a Java-based platform. It requires very high technical skills."
"I faced difficulties when using the email feature and documentation was scant."
"The dashboard components could be better. They could do a lot more."
"We had stability issues."
"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."
"SQL Server has a tendency to consume all the memory you allow it to. If you are not careful, you can basically break your server."
"One stability issue I encountered was the deadlocking between calls to the same resources (tables, etc.). That was solved by row versioning."
"The pricing could be better."
"The price could be better: Compare to Oracle it is cheaper but with the existence of many open source databases currently in the market, consider reducing the Licensing cost."
"The solution could improve by being more user-friendly."
"SQL could be improved by making all features available on the on-premise version of the product as well as the cloud version. When you buy the on-premise version, it's sort of an inferior product compared to the cloud version, which seems to get most of the latest and greatest features."
"Sometimes the system hangs. Its databases should be able to deal with more data in a faster way. Its speed of processing larger amounts of information should be improved."
"If SQL Server could perhaps run on Linux, that would be good."
 

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."
"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."
"You need to pay for the license. It most probably has per-core licensing."
"Licensing fees increase depending on size and performance. If you want higher performance, you should go for a different course."
"It costs a lot."
"The price of SQL Server could be reduced, the license is expensive. We have an annual subscription."
"This solution is available at a much lower price point than Oracle."
"SQL Server offers three versions. You can get a free trial for 30 days."
"As compared to Oracle Database, SQL Server is less expensive. For mid-sized organizations, SQL Server is completely all right, but people say it can't support large organizations with more than 2,000 users."
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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

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: May 2026.
900,838 professionals have used our research since 2012.