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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

"I am satisfied with the product in general given what the company invested in it, which was just our time."
"It improves sales and products, which motivates employees."
"Nice features available in SpagoBI compared with other open-source BI are Auditing, Collaborative BI, Query By Example, and User Profiling."
"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."
"SpagoBI makes delivering reports to our clients very easy."
"It's very easy to get the historical reports you need based on the business requirements and this helps our executives for taking decisions."
"The embedding feature is great."
"I would use SpagoBI if a company wants to use a free tool that has enough features."
"SQL Server is stable and is a high-performance database; we do hundreds of transactions per second, it's fairly robust, it does not struggle."
"I would absolutely recommend this solution to others."
"We found it to be quite scalable."
"The most valuable feature is that it is easy to use and you don't have to do a lot of configuration."
"The solution offers very good performance and is pretty reliable; the stability is excellent, there are no bugs or glitches, and it doesn't crash or freeze."
"The solution is configurable."
"Similar to Microsoft SQL, it is easy to scale."
"The most valuable features of this solution are easy queries and straightforward programming for beginners."
 

Cons

"Many things need to be improved, most of all robustness."
"Tomcat configuration was tricky in earlier versions."
"Unfortunately, many interesting features do not work when you are using a custom database for storing the metadata."
"I faced difficulties when using the email feature and documentation was scant."
"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."
"The only challenge here is that it's a Java-based platform. It requires very high technical skills."
"The demands of some jobs would slow Spago and lock the site, preventing any other job from processing."
"We expected the community to be bigger than what it currently is."
"The solution could improve by having more integration with other operating systems and other platforms."
"Overall, trying to make over with Oracle, it can be improved in usage for high data migration companies of large scale."
"The performance needs some improvement and it needs more features integrated into it."
"The solution could offer better integration with other solutions - specifically Microsoft."
"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."
"I want to see one improvement and this involves the replication between the DC and DR."
"The GUI needs improvement. From a technical perspective, it's quite complex, which may not be a problem for individuals with technical backgrounds like ours, especially since we've encountered similar interfaces. However, navigating the GUI can be challenging for newcomers or product owners without technical experience. For example, as someone transitioning from a developer role to a product management role, I find it relatively easy to use the GUI. But for those without a technical background, it's much more challenging to grasp what's happening."
"I would like to have a more directed modeling, to have the flexibility to design all databases using a graphic interface."
 

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 the solution could be cheaper."
"Synapse is a bit costly. If I compare it with different databases, I think it's a reasonable price"
"There is a license to use this solution. However, the model is not easy to understand. There is a guide you have to read about all the information on how it works. If you read this documentation, you can understand how it works. We are paying for our SQL Servers by CPU cores with an enterprise license."
"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 is a cost-effective solution for a small database."
"Cost is a major derivative for any organization. It has a reasonable cost value, and its cloud support is also better than others. Comparatively, Oracle can do the same things or is even better in certain areas, but it is expensive. The cost along with the support are the plus factors for SQL Server."
"The cost associated with SQL Servers is on the higher side."
"We pay approximately $12,000 USD per month for both the server and the license."
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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.
903,147 professionals have used our research since 2012.