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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 (32nd), 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 1.1% compared to last year.
SQL Server, on the other hand, focuses on Relational Databases Tools, holds 10.3% mindshare, down 15.1% since last year.
Reporting Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Knowage2.0%
Tableau Enterprise13.5%
Microsoft Power BI12.6%
Other71.9%
Reporting
Relational Databases Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SQL Server10.3%
Oracle Database10.3%
IBM Db2 Database6.6%
Other72.8%
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

"SpagoBI makes delivering reports to our clients very easy."
"The embedding feature is great."
"I am satisfied with the product in general given what the company invested in it, which was just our time."
"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."
"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."
"Being able to schedule necessary jobs needed for production jobs and programming run times"
"It improves sales and products, which motivates employees."
"The most valuable features to us are application implementation, development, and analysis."
"My advice for people looking into using SQL Server is that it's the best choice, especially for those who are beginners with databases."
"The most valuable feature is that it is easy to use and you don't have to do a lot of configuration."
"It allows for performance tuning to maximize performance."
"The most valuable aspect is the ability to utilize jobs and various functions to accomplish specific tasks, which cannot be achieved with standard procedures alone. This allows for a combination of features and functionalities to be employed."
"We don't use a lot of the more advanced features at this point, but for what we're doing right now, it's working really great with availability groups and other features."
"SQL Server is a highly stable solution."
"One of the big advantages of this product is its performance, where it works well when the data is not complex."
"Features like autoscaling, business continuity, and security are beneficial. The tool's compatibility with almost all of the enterprise-class applications is also beneficial for users."
 

Cons

"I faced difficulties when using the email feature and documentation was scant."
"The support is very meager: We had to break our heads to figure out everything"
"The demands of some jobs would slow Spago and lock the site, preventing any other job from processing."
"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."
"Tomcat configuration was tricky in earlier versions."
"We expected the community to be bigger than what it currently is."
"Development of SpagoBI has now been moved to Knowage. Users interested in further developments of the platform will have to look there."
"There was a time when Microsoft support provided very crisp answers, but over time, they have diluted their support to third parties, leading to a drop in support quality, which restricts me from giving a perfect 10, as post-sales service is crucial."
"I have no choice, our customer choose MS SQL."
"The licensing is pretty expensive."
"The interface integration could be better."
"While this is a reliable product, it has room for improvement."
"The way to make cursors and manage raw data in rows can be improved. Currently, the way to construct or build these cursors is very hard, and you can waste memory. You need a highly skilled person to make it more efficient. It can also have support for Cubes, which is the organization of data in different dimensions by using MDX languages."
"Better integration with other platforms would be an improvement."
"One thing I don't like about SQL Server is the way they've set up security with users and groups. It just doesn't seem that intuitive to me. Adding some more explanatory information might help some."
 

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."
"The price of SQL Server could be better in the African market. The licensing model needs to be improved, it is confusing."
"Licensing fees increase depending on size and performance. If you want higher performance, you should go for a different course."
"Synapse is a bit costly. If I compare it with different databases, I think it's a reasonable price"
"As compared to Oracle Database, SQL Server is less expensive. For mid-sized organizations, SQL Server is completely all right, but people say it can't support large organizations with more than 2,000 users."
"Pricing is reasonable for small organizations, but the scaling increases the price."
"SQL Server is an expensive solution."
"The price has been going higher and higher. The market is quite price sensitive."
"For licensing, we pay yearly. The licensing is very expensive, and it should be cheaper."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
21%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
35%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Construction 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
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, Plotly and others in Reporting. Updated: September 2026.
914,938 professionals have used our research since 2012.