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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 (34th), 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) (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 0.9% compared to last year.
SQL Server, on the other hand, focuses on Relational Databases Tools, holds 10.4% mindshare, down 16.2% since last year.
Reporting Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Knowage2.0%
Tableau Enterprise13.9%
Microsoft Power BI12.9%
Other71.2%
Reporting
Relational Databases Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SQL Server10.4%
Oracle Database10.4%
IBM Db2 Database6.6%
Other72.6%
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

"Being able to schedule necessary jobs needed for production jobs and programming run times"
"The most valuable features to us are application implementation, development, and analysis."
"Our customers really appreciate the self-service BI functionalities."
"I am satisfied with the product in general given what the company invested in it, which was just our time."
"SpagoBI makes delivering reports to our clients very easy."
"I would use SpagoBI if a company wants to use a free tool that has enough features."
"Customer Service: Excellent."
"Nice features available in SpagoBI compared with other open-source BI are Auditing, Collaborative BI, Query By Example, and User Profiling."
"Microsoft SQL Server is one of the better database administration software packages out there. It runs primarily on Windows Server platforms, but it can also run on Linux platforms."
"The most valuable features are programmability and reliability."
"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."
"A big advantage is the ability to store any type of data in SQL Server."
"One of the things I most like about SQL Server is the log shipping piece. This is a great feature."
"We use all of the features that SQL offers and we like business integration, database, and analysis."
"However, Microsoft SQL servers are a very trusted product."
"We're satisfied with the stability."
 

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 support is very meager: We had to break our heads to figure out everything"
"Yes, using Mobile and Desktop Editions, we would sometimes need to restart the service."
"We are not happy with the poor graphic user interface. It looks a bit old and sometimes it is not properly user friendly."
"We expected the community to be bigger than what it currently is."
"Many things need to be improved, most of all robustness."
"Development of SpagoBI has now been moved to Knowage. Users interested in further developments of the platform will have to look there."
"The thing I don't like is, I know a lot of people don't know about the backend security of SQL. They think others cannot get into their system and I tell them they can, they have the SA password."
"The SQL Server has a big issue when some systems use Java as a primary software interface."
"In the next release, I would like to see a better user interface and a familiar syntax."
"Security is an issue."
"Only one CPU core can be used. Can’t move a database between servers easily. Can’t use triggers."
"We want to move to Azure, and the solution could be made better to make the process easier for the migration from on-premise to the cloud."
"The solution is expensive. The licensing costs are high."
"There are certain shortcomings in the scalability of the product, making it an area where improvements are required."
 

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."
"Depending upon your usage, you can use the pay-as-you-go model for a short period of time. For longer projects, we can opt for one-year or a three-year license."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a seven out of ten."
"It is expensive in terms of licensing costs and pricing. If you want to scale SQL Server, it is very expensive. We probably have to pay extra for technical support. We also have to pay for the license of Windows on which the SQL Server resides, which is an extra cost."
"On a scale of one to ten, when one is cheap and ten is an expensive solution, I rate the product price as seven. The product is expensive."
"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."
"SQL Server has the best licensing price."
"SQL Server is an expensive solution."
"We are on an annual enterprise license for the solution and the cost of the license could be reduced."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
25%
Manufacturing Company
7%
University
7%
Marketing Services Firm
7%
Financial Services Firm
37%
Construction Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Outsourcing 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 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.
908,800 professionals have used our research since 2012.