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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 1.9%, up 0.8% compared to last year.
SQL Server, on the other hand, focuses on Relational Databases Tools, holds 11.2% mindshare, down 17.9% since last year.
Reporting Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Knowage1.9%
Microsoft Power BI15.3%
Tableau Enterprise15.1%
Other67.7%
Reporting
Relational Databases Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SQL Server11.2%
Oracle Database11.2%
IBM Db2 Database6.5%
Other71.1%
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

"Nice features available in SpagoBI compared with other open-source BI are Auditing, Collaborative BI, Query By Example, and User Profiling."
"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 would use SpagoBI if a company wants to use a free tool that has enough features."
"The concept of engines is quite powerful allowing the user to work with report authoring/provisioning tools of their choice."
"Unified interface, a lot of tools for BI, easy configuration, standalone SDK."
"Our customers really appreciate the self-service BI functionalities."
"It's very easy to get the historical reports you need based on the business requirements and this helps our executives for taking decisions."
"Customer Service: Excellent."
"SQL Server is both scalable and stable."
"However, Microsoft SQL servers are a very trusted product."
"Technical support has been helpful and responsive."
"I have found the most valuable features to be the flexibility and the vast amount of features available."
"SSAS is the most interesting feature to organize the data and let the users play with it."
"Stability is one of the most valuable features."
"They have improved the UI and ease of accessing the database and server which is good. You can load it up and start using it from the very minute it is implemented."
"In summary, this is a good product and I recommend it."
 

Cons

"We had stability issues."
"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 demands of some jobs would slow Spago and lock the site, preventing any other job from processing."
"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."
"Development of SpagoBI has now been moved to Knowage. Users interested in further developments of the platform will have to look there."
"The support is very meager: We had to break our heads to figure out everything"
"I faced difficulties when using the email feature and documentation was scant."
"The performance for the platform wasn't as good as I would like. I'm not entirely satisfied."
"Its ability to handle certain kinds of large data could be improved."
"The product overall would benefit from the addition of better tutorials to help master the skills necessary to actually build a project database. Right now, what is available isn't sufficient."
"SQL Server is not going to do that. In this way, it is not very scalable."
"Its security can be improved. When you look at the Windows environment, it isn't the most secure environment. It is exposed to so many attacks. They continuously need to improve the security of the platform on which it sits."
"The solution’s initial setup could be complex, requiring some design of how you want to lay everything out and what type of storage you want to put certain things on."
"SQL Server could integrate better with other platforms."
"If SQL Server could perhaps run on Linux, that would be good."
 

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 cost is high and because it's an expensive product, we are in the process of moving towards open-source solutions."
"Synapse is a bit costly. If I compare it with different databases, I think it's a reasonable price"
"There is no licensing cost for SQL Server."
"Pricing is a bit on the higher side."
"Historically, SQL Server has been much more affordable than Oracle, which is overpriced."
"The SQL server is affordable. I rate the pricing a five out of ten."
"It is something we have been using for a lot of years. If we're paying, it should be reasonable."
"There is a license required for this solution and we pay monthly. The price is reasonable compared to other solutions."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
19%
University
10%
Marketing Services Firm
10%
Retailer
8%
Financial Services Firm
40%
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 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, IBM and others in Reporting. Updated: April 2026.
892,287 professionals have used our research since 2012.