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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 (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 10.7% mindshare, down 17.3% since last year.
Reporting Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Knowage2.0%
Tableau Enterprise14.5%
Microsoft Power BI14.1%
Other69.4%
Reporting
Relational Databases Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SQL Server10.7%
Oracle Database10.9%
IBM Db2 Database6.3%
Other72.1%
Relational Databases Tools
 

Featured Reviews

BS
Software Engineer at syntegra
Open-source with great embedding capabilities but the dashboards could be better
I know the initial setup is pretty straightforward. It doesn't take a long time to deploy. Even on your own personal computer, when you want to try it out, it doesn't take too long to get it running. For the initial setup, I'd say it's maybe a four out of five in terms of how easy it is. You need to add these Java dependencies and so forth, which can be a bit boring, however, it's almost perfect. To deploy Knowage usually takes about a day. In terms of the implementation strategy, it's just following the instructions that they give us on the installation and then just knowing how to handle the process. Usually, there is a group of engineers who do that for us and manage the server itself. If a team is knowledgeable, then it doesn't take a long time. When you need a new instance, it's very quick. The implementation strategy is based on just following instructions on the installation process from Knowage. For deployment and maintenance, we need just maybe two people simply to monitor the traffic coming in. However, it's maintained by people who were doing other jobs like maintaining our other server. They just monitor the Knowage server and make sure that it's up and running and that there are no bugs. There are not too many bugs coming out from the debugger.
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

"I would use SpagoBI if a company wants to use a free tool that has enough features."
"I am satisfied with the product in general given what the company invested in it, which was just our time."
"The embedding feature is great."
"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."
"Our customers really appreciate the self-service BI functionalities."
"Being able to schedule necessary jobs needed for production jobs and programming run times"
"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."
"It allows for performance tuning to maximize performance."
"The solution has a reliable database."
"I think just having everything in one centralized set of databases where there is easily managed manageable."
"SQL Server is an inexpensive solution, SQL is similar to Oracle and integrates well with tools in the cloud environment."
"SQL Server and their offers are very good, you can switch over, export, and do other things, I got access from users and it is very flexible to use."
"My advice for people looking into using SQL Server is that it's the best choice, especially for those who are beginners with databases."
"I believe Always On is the most valuable feature; it's also easy to use and not very tricky."
"SQL Server Profiler makes finding and debugging easy."
 

Cons

"We had stability issues."
"The dashboard components could be better. They could do a lot more."
"The demands of some jobs would slow Spago and lock the site, preventing any other job from processing."
"The dashboard components could be better."
"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 support is very meager: We had to break our heads to figure out everything"
"There are additional features such as Data Integration, Data Visualization, MobileBI, Cloud BI, Data enrichment and massaging should be implemented in the next release."
"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."
"The solution is very expensive."
"I have experience working with SQL Server 2016 and older versions, including handling JSON data. Initially, I found the JSON capabilities to be less helpful, but over time, they have greatly improved. SQL Server now offers extensive capabilities for working with various forms of data, particularly when communicating with text, such as in JSON format. I particularly prefer working with these features on Azure, as it provides numerous possibilities, especially in the field of business intelligence (BI). Additionally, the serverless platform offered by Azure is highly beneficial and makes tasks easier to manage."
"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."
"There should be more security updates for the product."
"On the SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) side, I have noticed more bugs in terms of being able to connect to our SQL servers."
"Problems include - is it an MS product? Then licensing can be a pain if they do an audit."
"SQL Server could integrate better with other platforms."
"The SQL Server has a big issue when some systems use Java as a primary software interface."
 

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."
"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."
"Currently, almost all of my machines are in Azure and I think it is the best way of licensing now (VM+software)."
"The price of SQL Server is great. In my company, SQL Server is part of the Microsoft Suite, we don't have to pay for any additional license costs, it's quite cost-effective for us."
"Historically, SQL Server has been much more affordable than Oracle, which is overpriced."
"It is annual."
"There is a license required for servers and for the POS we use the free version. The free version allows you to have tables and a total database size of approximately 10 GB, which is enough for our requirements."
"There is a license required for this solution."
"We have an enterprise license, which we consider to be fine."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
19%
University
11%
Marketing Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
39%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Computer Software Company
4%
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 Enterprise119
 

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, Domo and others in Reporting. Updated: April 2026.
893,915 professionals have used our research since 2012.