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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 (34th), Reporting (21st)
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 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

"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."
"The most valuable features to us are application implementation, development, and analysis."
"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."
"It improves sales and products, which motivates employees."
"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."
"It's a good option for those that have a lot of Microsoft solutions in use."
"The support from Microsoft has been good."
"The installation was straightforward. We did not have a large installation and it took a couple of weeks to complete."
"It's a very good solution and I've been pretty happy with its capabilities."
"The interface for building the queries or writing the store procedures is good."
"From basic or incomplete reports and statistics, we moved to a full reporting data structure, providing a holistic view of the organisation's data."
"It is a stable product, and it runs seamlessly. It is not complex."
"The most valuable features of SQL Server are the speed, great support, and it is from a known vendor."
 

Cons

"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."
"Development of SpagoBI has now been moved to Knowage. Users interested in further developments of the platform will have to look there."
"I encountered a lot of issues when I tried to integrate the map in order to realize Intelligent Location Dashboards."
"Many things need to be improved, most of all robustness."
"The dashboard components could be better. They could do a lot more."
"The only challenge here is that it's a Java-based platform. It requires very high technical skills."
"Unfortunately, many interesting features do not work when you are using a custom database for storing the metadata."
"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."
"Reloading all the data in a database can cause potential data loss especially when the size of database is large."
"The UX design of this system needs improvement."
"Although I am satisfied with the solution, some clients have asked us to resolve technical issues, such as those involving silver solution and replication."
"We have had problems implementing a data warehouse using SQL Server."
"The price of SQL Server could be reduced, the license is expensive."
"I want to see one improvement and this involves the replication between the DC and DR."
"The pricing could be more affordable."
 

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."
"It's a bit expensive."
"The price could be cheaper."
"I rate the product’s pricing a six out of ten."
"We're looking at alternative solutions because we think Microsoft's licensing costs have been expensive."
"The price of SQL Server is great. In my company, SQL Server is part of the Microsoft Suite, we don't have to pay for any additional license costs, it's quite cost-effective for us."
"I would rate the tool's pricing a six out of ten. It is not extremely cheap but also it's not the most expensive product."
"It requires the purchase of a license."
"Our customers do pay license fees for the MS SQL Server but the Rabbit is free, as it is open-source software."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
23%
Manufacturing Company
7%
University
7%
Retailer
7%
Financial Services Firm
36%
Outsourcing Company
7%
Construction Company
6%
Manufacturing 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: August 2026.
911,473 professionals have used our research since 2012.