No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

Knowage vs SQL Server comparison

Why PeerSpot?
 

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

"SpagoBI makes delivering reports to our clients very easy."
"The most valuable feature of SpagoBI is that it is open source and 100% free without limits."
"Our customers really appreciate the self-service BI functionalities."
"Customer Service: Excellent."
"Nice features available in SpagoBI compared with other open-source BI are Auditing, Collaborative BI, Query By Example, and User Profiling."
"We can easily do our own customizations."
"The concept of engines is quite powerful allowing the user to work with report authoring/provisioning tools of their choice."
"I would use SpagoBI if a company wants to use a free tool that has enough features."
"For my business requirements, the performance is good."
"The solution is very common. It's easy to use."
"SQL is stable."
"The solution has proven to be very stable."
"I would recommend SQL Server for its stability, scalability, and ease of use."
"What I like best about this product is the environment."
"The solution is very easy to use."
"The technical support is good from Microsoft."
 

Cons

"I faced difficulties when using the email feature and documentation was scant."
"We are not happy with the poor graphic user interface. It looks a bit old and sometimes it is not properly user friendly."
"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."
"When it comes to Knowage, it's a bit heavy, it's time-consuming sometimes, it's not very fast, and definitely not as fast as other business intelligence tools in terms of getting graphical reports."
"I encountered a lot of issues when I tried to integrate the map in order to realize Intelligent Location Dashboards."
"There are additional features such as Data Integration, Data Visualization, MobileBI, Cloud BI, Data enrichment and massaging should be implemented in the next release."
"Unfortunately, many interesting features do not work when you are using a custom database for storing the metadata."
"The dashboard components could be better. They could do a lot more."
"The way to make cursors and manage raw data in rows can be improved."
"The free version of SQL Server is time-limited before updating to the paid version."
"There should be more tools and documentation for tuning the performance of Microsoft SQL Server."
"Debugging from the debugger tool functionality should be enhanced."
"Besides that, SQL Server has become very expensive like Oracle."
"I would appreciate a dark theme for SQL Server Management Studio and ability to add databases with TDE enabled into availability groups."
"I think the treatment of database storage could be improved."
"Performance-wise it's still not as good as on-premises, but it is easy to work with."
 

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 could always be lower."
"Pricing for this product is very reasonable."
"Although it comes with a cost, using the most recent version is highly advisable, since it would ensure a certain measure of bug fixes and stability. The sole issue would involve the cost, as this is expensive."
"Our customers do pay license fees for the MS SQL Server but the Rabbit is free, as it is open-source software."
"The price could be cheaper."
"There is a license required for servers and for the POS we use the free version. The free version allows you to have tables and a total database size of approximately 10 GB, which is enough for our requirements."
"There is a subscription that needs to be purchased to use the solution."
"​We are a Microsoft shop, so we use Active Directory. That integrates well with this product, but we did look at Oracle. We also looked at IBM. This was the best price point for us for what we were getting.​"
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Reporting solutions are best for your needs.
911,549 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
23%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Marketing Services Firm
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.
911,549 professionals have used our research since 2012.