Knowage vs SQL Server comparison

The compared Knowage and Microsoft solutions aren't in the same category. Knowage is ranked #21 in RT , and holds a 1.3% mindshare in the category. Microsoft is ranked #1 in SQL , with an average rating of 8.1, and holds a 12.1% mindshare. Additionally, 85% of Knowage users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 93% of Microsoft users who would recommend it.

Knowage

Read 18 Knowage reviews

969 Views
465 Comparison Views

85% willing to recommend

SQL Server

Read 272 SQL Server reviews

10,925 Views
9,505 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

Knowage

SQL Server

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Knowage and SQL Server based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Salesforce, Domo and others in Reporting.

To learn more, read our detailed Reporting Report (Updated: January 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Reporting

January 2026

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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

Ranking in other categories

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (33rd), Reporting (21st)

SQL Server

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

272

Ranking in other categories

Relational Databases Tools (1st), Database Management Systems (DBMS) (4th)

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 1.3%, up 0.7% compared to last year.
SQL Server, on the other hand, focuses on Relational Databases Tools, holds 12.1% mindshare, down 19.8% since last year.

Reporting Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Knowage	1.3%
Microsoft Power BI	18.8%
Tableau Enterprise	16.8%
Other	63.099999999999994%

Reporting

Relational Databases Tools Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
SQL Server	12.1%
Oracle Database	11.5%
SAP HANA	7.5%
Other	68.9%

Relational Databases Tools

Featured Reviews

BlessingSithole

Software Engineer at syntegra

Open-source with great embedding capabilities but the dashboards could be better

I know the initial setup is pretty straightforward. It doesn't take a long time to deploy. Even on your own personal computer, when you want to try it out, it doesn't take too long to get it running. For the initial setup, I'd say it's maybe a four out of five in terms of how easy it is. You need to add these Java dependencies and so forth, which can be a bit boring, however, it's almost perfect. To deploy Knowage usually takes about a day. In terms of the implementation strategy, it's just following the instructions that they give us on the installation and then just knowing how to handle the process. Usually, there is a group of engineers who do that for us and manage the server itself. If a team is knowledgeable, then it doesn't take a long time. When you need a new instance, it's very quick. The implementation strategy is based on just following instructions on the installation process from Knowage. For deployment and maintenance, we need just maybe two people simply to monitor the traffic coming in. However, it's maintained by people who were doing other jobs like maintaining our other server. They just monitor the Knowage server and make sure that it's up and running and that there are no bugs. There are not too many bugs coming out from the debugger.

Read full review

Peter Larsson

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.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"The embedding feature is great."

"The concept of engines is quite powerful allowing the user to work with report authoring/provisioning tools of their choice."

"I can't name the features the way the Knowage community calls them because I still don't know the lingo. However, I can describe them. I like the ability to join more than one report, set all fields on one end, and replicate that on the other reports. I like that a lot. I think it's one of the features that got me using Knowage. They have tables, and I like that too. They took SQL scripts and many other scripts and enabled them to even correlate with Python. That's also one of the best things about Knowage. You could also decide to get information per user role, and this is also a feature that I like in Knowage."

"We can easily do our own customizations."

"The performance is good."

"It is stable, and it works okay."

"From a security perspective, we have no complaints."

"It is a pretty good solution. The on-premise version 2019 has many features, and they had introduced a really good and stable environment in version 2019. It has very good integration with big data clusters and other things. It covers pretty much everything that you can do with a SQL server. You can use any language to connect to it, which is not there in other solutions. They have also introduced Python, and it also has ArcScale. PaaS is a modern, scalable database. You can use Power Automate and a lot of features in this. It is very easy, and you don't have to worry about versions and upgrades. Microsoft keeps on adding new features to this solution. Microsoft is improving its connectivity on an ongoing basis. It connects well with Office 365. If you see something not working, in a couple of weeks, it is going to work because there is a team working on it. You can vote for the things that are missing, and Microsoft can work on them depending on the product that they're launching."

"Enables us to convert to bigger DBs and more easily move or upgrade between branches."

"It is a simple query language. It is consistent across all versions. If you start with an older version, move to the newer version. The same code will still work."

"We found it to be quite scalable."

"The solution offers very high performance."

More SQL Server pros

Cons

"Development of SpagoBI has now been moved to Knowage. Users interested in further developments of the platform will have to look there."

"The dashboard components could be better."

"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."

"The only challenge here is that it's a Java-based platform. It requires very high technical skills."

"There are a lot of improvements in the cloud space about which we open a case with Microsoft every now and then. These improvements are not in terms of features or functionality. They are more related to their own compatibility or connectivity on which they keep on working to improve the product."

"Our biggest problem with SQL Server is latency. The communication between the cloud and the on-premises environment is slow. The data needs to be encrypted for security, and you have to exchange data certificates between environments. You can adjust the configuration to improve performance, but it would be nice if SQL Server had some templates to resolve problems."

"The product performance can become slow when the data reaches sizes like a terabyte."

"From a development perspective, the solution needs to be a lot easier to understand or it needs to be easier to implement API packages for connection pooling so we don't have connection interruptions when, let's say, a hundred people simultaneously access the network on a given system, utilizing a specific or single database."

"SQL Server could improve the integration with nonrational database solutions, such as MongoDB."

"You do need to have technical knowledge in order to install the solution. It's not something a layperson can do."

"Maintenance of the solution is an area of concern, and improvements can be helpful."

"Sometimes we experience issues with its stability."

More SQL Server cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Knowage is open-source, and an enterprise edition is also available."

"It allows the implementation of an effective reporting system using internal skills at a limited upfront cost."

"The price could be better. Aside from the basic features, if you need any additional features that can be extended, for example, if you want to connect with the heterogeneous databases, they are being managed as separate services and not included in the package. If you manage a database in Azure, it's not providing SFS and reporting services. However, on-premises, if you purchase the SQL Server license, it includes SFIS and SFRS services. If you take Postgre SQL and MySQL, they provide almost all the same features even though they are both open source databases."

"The price of SQL Server could be reduced, the license is expensive. We have an annual subscription."

"It is something we have been using for a lot of years. If we're paying, it should be reasonable."

"The product’s price depends on the specific server requirements."

"To scale the solution there are additional costs."

"We purchased our license and the pricing is fine for us."

"It is annual."

"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."

More SQL Server pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Hospitality Company

10%

Insurance Company

10%

University

10%

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

39%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	7
Midsize Enterprise	6
Large Enterprise	6

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	119
Midsize Enterprise	59
Large Enterprise	115

Questions from the Community

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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...

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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...

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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...

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Comparisons

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Compared 7% of the time

SAS Visual Analytics vs Knowage

Compared 7% of the time

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IBM Db2 Database vs SQL Server

Compared 19% of the time

Oracle Database vs SQL Server

Compared 12% of the time

SAP HANA vs SQL Server

Compared 9% of the time

MariaDB vs SQL Server

Compared 9% of the time

MySQL vs SQL Server

Compared 5% of the time

More SQL Server Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Knowage

January 2026

Download Knowage product report

Buyer's Guide

SQL Server

January 2026

Download SQL Server product report

Also Known As

SpagoBI

Microsoft SQL Server, MSSQL, MS SQL

Overview

Knowage (formerly SpagoBI) has a 14-years history. The actual release is the 6.3.

Knowage offers FULL ANALYTICAL CAPABILITIES, with a special focus on big data analytics and comprehensive support to rich and multi-source data analysis. Knowage provides different modules, each one focused on a specific domain but mutually combinable (Big Data, Smart Intelligence, Enterprise Reporting, Location Intelligence, Performance Management, Predictive Analysis). Moreover, Knowage is an OPEN SOURCE solution: the source code is freely accessible, everyone is allowed to join the community and build the own business solution to ensure strategic decision-making and improved productivity.

Knowage suite is supported by Engineering Group, the leading Italian software and services company, with about 10,000 people and more than 50 offices worldwide. Maintenance and support services (such as trainings, migration support, proof-of-concepts, etc) are provided by Engineering Group (KNOWAGE Labs) under subscription.

Knowage

SQL Server is a relational database management system (RDBMS) by Microsoft. The product's main purposes are to store data and retrieve it as requested by other software applications - on the same computer or on another computer across a shared network. The solution is built on top of Structured Query Language (SQL), which is a standardized programming language used for relational database management.

The product is tied to Transact-SQL (T-SQL), which is an implementation of SQL from Microsoft that adds several proprietary programming extensions to the standard language. SQL Server is built similarly to other RDBMS products, as its structure is a row-based table that connects related data elements in different tables to one another. One of its most important components is the SQL Server Database Engine, as it controls data processing, storage, and security. Beneath the Database Engine is the SQL Server Operating System, which is used for memory and I/O management, locking data to avoid unneeded upgrades, and job scheduling.

The solution has four editions with different sets of services and tools. They include:

SQL Server Developer
SQL Server Expression
SQL Server Standard
SQL Server Enterprise

The first two are available for free and are typically utilized by smaller companies, as they work with fewer functions and storage. The second two editions are generally used by bigger organizations and enterprises and offer more features.

The solution has several functions through which users can facilitate different data-related processes. These include:

Aggregate functions: These functions are used to calculate one or more values and return a single value.
Window functions: Window functions calculate an aggregate value based on a group of rows and return multiple rows for each involved group.
Date functions: These functions allow clients to handle data and time data efficiently.
String functions: Through the string functions, SQL Server processes an input string and returns a string or numeric value.
System functions: The system functions of the product return objects, values, and settings.

SQL Server Services

SQL Server has a wide range of add-on services that provide additional benefits beyond database management. These services include:

Machine learning: SQL Server machine learning services allow users to do machine learning and data analytics within the product.
Service broker: This feature is a part of the database engine and offers messaging and message queuing for applications on the platform.
Replication: This feature consists of transaction replication, merge replication, and snapshot replication.
Analysis: SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) adds online analytical processing (OLAP) and data mining capabilities to SQL Server databases.
Reporting: This feature supports the development of custom reporting applications.
Notifications: This feature generates data-driven notifications which are sent to subscribers of Notification Services.
Integration: This SQL Server feature provides capabilities for data integration, data import, and data warehousing.
Full-text search: Through this feature, users can utilize specialized indexing and query for unstructured text stored in the solution.
Visual studio: This feature supports data programming with SQL Server.
Azure Data Studio: This is a cross-platform query editor that can be downloaded and used alongside SQL Server.

SQL Server Benefits

The solution has many benefits for users. These include the following:

The platform ensures a consistent experience across other platforms while being fast and agile.
Through the built-in intelligence features, users can understand their data better.
The solution has enterprise-level security, which ensures the smooth and safe performance of users' data.
SQL Server offers the ability to retrieve large amounts of data quickly and efficiently.
The product installation process is fairly easy, and it offers a user-friendly interface.
SQL Server offers improved data storage and retrieval functions through frequent upgrades.
The solution reduces the risk of database server attacks, since it is not an open-source database.

Reviews from Real Users

A president at a consultancy evaluates SQL Server as a veteran solution with critical log shipping feature.

Harkamal S., a user at a manufacturing company, rates SQL Server with a high mark because it is a stable, scalable, and easy-to-deploy solution that pretty much covers everything.

Microsoft

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, Domo and others in Reporting. Updated: January 2026.

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