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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

"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."
"I am satisfied with the product in general given what the company invested in it, which was just our time."
"We can easily do our own customizations."
"SpagoBI makes delivering reports to our clients very easy."
"The most valuable features to us are application implementation, development, and analysis."
"I would use SpagoBI if a company wants to use a free tool that has enough features."
"Nice features available in SpagoBI compared with other open-source BI are Auditing, Collaborative BI, Query By Example, and User Profiling."
"The embedding feature is great."
"SQL Server's performance is fine."
"The most valuable feature of SQL Server is that it is easy to set up."
"It's a good learning environment, it's easy enough to learn and understand. Anybody that picks up the language early on will be able to develop in it."
"SQL Server is easier to use than Oracle, programming-wise, and it is the latest technology and pretty powerful in terms of the high availability of the virtual server."
"I like that it's very easy to use, and Veeam is excellent. There are tons of experts and writers in the area now, and we don't find the same for other databases."
"For my business requirements, the performance is good."
"This is an excellent solution when it comes to databases."
"The solution is very intuitive and easy to use."
 

Cons

"We are not happy with the poor graphic user interface. It looks a bit old and sometimes it is not properly user friendly."
"I encountered a lot of issues when I tried to integrate the map in order to realize Intelligent Location Dashboards."
"Development of SpagoBI has now been moved to Knowage. Users interested in further developments of the platform will have to look there."
"I faced difficulties when using the email feature and documentation was scant."
"Many things need to be improved, most of all robustness."
"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."
"The dashboard components could be better. They could do a lot more."
"Yes, using Mobile and Desktop Editions, we would sometimes need to restart the service."
"The licensing costs are very high."
"The solution could improve by being more user-friendly."
"There are a few use cases where we do need the Active-Active options instead of Active-Passive, yet those kinds of options are not available for Microsoft."
"I would like to see SQL Server add the ability to write to multiple sites or support replication between multiple sites at the transaction level."
"The stored procedure integration with our development could be better. Things are always changing very fast at Microsoft, and it takes a lot of resources to get on top of it. We're struggling with version control. In terms of new features, we don't have any feature requests. We are not focusing on the database."
"The areas that need improvement are with regards to the commercial aspect of the solution, the licensing cost could be reduced in order to help customers to adopt it."
"Additional interfaces would be an improvement."
"From Microsoft -- poor/very expensive, but there are many other helpful resources out there."
 

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."
"SQL Server offers three versions. You can get a free trial for 30 days."
"We are on an annual enterprise license for the solution and the cost of the license could be reduced."
"You need to pay for the license. It most probably has per-core licensing."
"We purchased our license and the pricing is fine for us."
"Licensing fees increase depending on size and performance. If you want higher performance, you should go for a different course."
"The licensing is on an annual basis."
"We're looking at alternative solutions because we think Microsoft's licensing costs have been expensive."
"For our purpose, we are not required to have a license for what we are using it for."
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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
38%
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
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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.
904,054 professionals have used our research since 2012.