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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 (21st)
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 10.5% mindshare, down 16.4% since last year.
Reporting Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Knowage2.0%
Tableau Enterprise14.6%
Microsoft Power BI13.5%
Other69.9%
Reporting
Relational Databases Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SQL Server10.5%
Oracle Database10.4%
IBM Db2 Database6.6%
Other72.5%
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

"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 embedding feature is great."
"We can easily do our own customizations."
"The most valuable features to us are application implementation, development, and analysis."
"Our customers really appreciate the self-service BI functionalities."
"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."
"The most valuable feature of SpagoBI is that it is open source and 100% free without limits."
"I would use SpagoBI if a company wants to use a free tool that has enough features."
"It is quite reliable in cluster configurations and has helped me to reduce downtime and improve SLAs."
"There is no lack of features."
"There are a lot of great features: I like T-SQL, which is wonderful, the backups are excellent, many things are much easier to manage, I really enjoy all of the features and functions within the SQL language itself, the stored procedures, the security has been excellent, the initial setup is very straightforward, the stability is very good, and we find it easy to scale if we need to."
"We've mostly been pretty happy with its performance."
"It is easy to manage for the administrator. It is also easy to use for applications that are Windows-based. It is a very stable product, and it has got backup and recovery tools."
"The solution's most valuable part revolves around data management, which can be seen in its audit features and performance."
"I use this solution as our data warehouse; we use the reports, data analysis, and for connecting our databases to multiple resources."
"SQL Server is definitely easy to use, and with the volume that we have, it's also stable."
 

Cons

"The dashboard components could be better. They could do a lot more."
"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."
"Many things need to be improved, most of all robustness."
"Unfortunately, many interesting features do not work when you are using a custom database for storing the metadata."
"Yes, using Mobile and Desktop Editions, we would sometimes need to restart the service."
"The only challenge here is that it's a Java-based platform. It requires very high technical skills."
"We expected the community to be bigger than what it currently is."
"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."
"If there wasn't Stack Overflow, that would be a problem. But luckily there are also other resources on the web which we can use to help ourselves. Just depending on Microsoft support it would not be so great."
"Most of the large banks are shifting from SQL Server to Oracle Database because of its slowness."
"SQL Server's scalability allows it to handle growth and increased workloads effectively, though it sometimes takes longer to load data when starting or can get stuck when multiple tabs are opened."
"In the next releases, I would only like more enhanced backups and more restore points."
"The speed is inconsistent."
"For each additional core feature you want to add to your DBMS edition, it is more money."
"The way SQL Server pivots data could be improved. For example, I would like built-in comma-separated pivot and unpivot functions."
"For small-scale businesses, Microsoft could improve by removing some limits in SQL Express."
 

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."
"Their options for concurrency and locking are good, as well as their prices."
"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."
"The price for the Standard Edition is approximately $3,000 USD per core. Once you include technical support, SQL Server is cheaper than PostgreSQL and MySQL."
"I believe the licensing to be on an annual basis."
"There is a license to use this solution. However, the model is not easy to understand. There is a guide you have to read about all the information on how it works. If you read this documentation, you can understand how it works. We are paying for our SQL Servers by CPU cores with an enterprise license."
"This is a downside of enterprise Microsoft products."
"We have had to purchase the Enterprise version to the tune of a few hundred thousand dollars, which is just ridiculous."
"My advice is quite straightforward. If you know the number of users who really and truly need access to the Server then it is a no-brainer. If you do not know, then get the basic package and minimum licenses and start from there. Needless to say, users can develop/use data structures outside and then deploy onto the Server."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
23%
Manufacturing Company
8%
University
8%
Marketing Services Firm
8%
Financial Services Firm
37%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Construction Company
6%
Outsourcing Company
5%
 

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: July 2026.
906,418 professionals have used our research since 2012.