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Knowage vs SQL Server comparison

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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 (34th), Reporting (22nd)
SQL Server
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
275
Ranking in other categories
Relational Databases Tools (1st), Database Management Systems (DBMS) (2nd)
 

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 1.0% compared to last year.
SQL Server, on the other hand, focuses on Relational Databases Tools, holds 10.3% mindshare, down 15.3% since last year.
Reporting Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Knowage2.0%
Tableau Enterprise13.7%
Microsoft Power BI12.7%
Other71.6%
Reporting
Relational Databases Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SQL Server10.3%
Oracle Database10.2%
IBM Db2 Database6.6%
Other72.9%
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 concept of engines is quite powerful allowing the user to work with report authoring/provisioning tools of their choice."
"Customer Service: Excellent."
"It's very easy to get the historical reports you need based on the business requirements and this helps our executives for taking decisions."
"The most valuable features to us are application implementation, development, and analysis."
"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."
"Being able to schedule necessary jobs needed for production jobs and programming run times"
"Our customers really appreciate the self-service BI functionalities."
"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."
"I love SQL Server's Common Table Expression, and in addition to that, I like its lead and lag functions, which helped us reduce a lot of code when comparing rows in SQL Server."
"SQL Server, generally speaking, is stable also in high transaction environments."
"The initial setup isn't overly complex."
"I recommend this solution because you can engage in database manipulation, administration and manage almost all your requirements."
"I love the developer version. Microsoft tells you about all the cool things they provided for everybody. You can develop and do anything with it. It's really good to learn. Oracle will not give you that much freedom, and Microsoft really kills it. You don't do anything with it but develop, learn, break, and push it to its limits. If there are problems, you show Microsoft or ask them, "what's going on here?" There is good community support for the developer edition, and that's what I really appreciate. You can teach people about it without limitations. You can have small databases created. You can keep it for a year and then work on it. It's a good thing for learners and developers."
"Without any doubt the Integration Services and Analysis Services are the most widely used. These are the basis for data quality, data gathering, ETL process, as well as collation for the data warehouse, Cube-generation, and ad-hoc processes. The ease in which you may mold a process flow or even modularly add in new structures is something which is much needed in my job."
"The solution is valuable because it seamlessly extracts reports and enables the collection of information from different tables."
"The product’s most valuable features are flexibility and scalability."
 

Cons

"Tomcat configuration was tricky in earlier versions."
"We had stability issues."
"Unfortunately, many interesting features do not work when you are using a custom database for storing the metadata."
"The demands of some jobs would slow Spago and lock the site, preventing any other job from processing."
"There are additional features such as Data Integration, Data Visualization, MobileBI, Cloud BI, Data enrichment and massaging should be implemented in the next release."
"I encountered a lot of issues when I tried to integrate the map in order to realize Intelligent Location Dashboards."
"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"
"We experience latency at times when there is a lot of data being processed."
"You do need to have technical knowledge in order to install the solution. It's not something a layperson can do."
"If you are a new user then this solution could be difficult, they could improve by making the overall usage easier."
"In terms of what could be improved, everything on-premise is now moving to the cloud. Obviously SQL Server has also moved, because Microsoft Excel has its own cloud called Azure Finance. Every solution comes with its own advantages and disadvantages."
"Only one CPU core can be used. Can’t move a database between servers easily. Can’t use triggers."
"Third-party services from Redgate should be built-in to it, like SQL Search."
"One stability issue I encountered was the deadlocking between calls to the same resources (tables, etc.). That was solved by row versioning."
"We have had problems implementing a data warehouse using SQL Server."
 

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 requires the purchase of a license."
"Although it comes with a cost, using the most recent version is highly advisable, since it would ensure a certain measure of bug fixes and stability. The sole issue would involve the cost, as this is expensive."
"Since we are a cloud-based company, there is AWS pricing on top of the SQL Server pricing. The Enterprise Edition can typically sell from around $1000 dollars a month, which is not cheap. Then, there is an additional one-time Windows cost, based on the code, which can go anywhere from $30,000 to $40,000 for the license."
"It costs a lot."
"Pricing for this product is very reasonable."
"I rate the product’s pricing a six out of ten."
"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."
"The cost associated with SQL Servers is on the higher side."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
22%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Marketing Services Firm
6%
Financial Services Firm
35%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Construction Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

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
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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: September 2026.
913,924 professionals have used our research since 2012.