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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."
"Unified interface, a lot of tools for BI, easy configuration, standalone SDK."
"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."
"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."
"Customer Service: Excellent."
"I would use SpagoBI if a company wants to use a free tool that has enough features."
"Being able to schedule necessary jobs needed for production jobs and programming run times"
"We found it to be quite scalable."
"One of the best features of SQL Server is the efficient retrieval of information."
"It is an overall very good product."
"The technical support that Microsoft provides is great."
"Very easy to use, and it's very democratic in the enterprise."
"The stability of the solution is quite good; we don't have issues with it, it doesn't crash or freeze, we don't experience bugs or glitches, and it's reliable."
"In summary, this is a good product, I plan to continue using it, and I definitely recommend it."
"I love the developer version because you can develop and do anything with it, learn, break, and push it to its limits with great community support and without limitations, making it a good thing for learners and developers."
 

Cons

"Tomcat configuration was tricky in earlier versions."
"The support is very meager: We had to break our heads to figure out everything"
"The dashboard components could be better. They could do a lot more."
"We are not happy with the poor graphic user interface. It looks a bit old and sometimes it is not properly user friendly."
"We had stability issues."
"Yes, using Mobile and Desktop Editions, we would sometimes need to restart the service."
"We expected the community to be bigger than what it currently is."
"Development of SpagoBI has now been moved to Knowage. Users interested in further developments of the platform will have to look there."
"When reviewing SQL processes it would be great if all of the local processes on the SQL server were marshaled to a remote SSMS client."
"For small-scale businesses, Microsoft could improve by removing some limits in SQL Express."
"Sometimes the cross-database performance isn't the best."
"If SQL Server could perhaps run on Linux, that would be good. Most of us prefer Linux and I've used a lot of Linux. I understand that SQL Server is quite powerful, but I'm not sure if the functionality is there, but if it could be used in an open-source type of environment, it would be very good."
"The Management Studio is a pretty heavy piece of software, and it's sometimes slow. I would recommend making an express version of the Management Studio, which is lighter and has fewer features but is a little faster."
"Since this is a relational order system, scalability has a limit."
"Performance could be improved."
"The way to make cursors and manage raw data in rows can be improved. Currently, the way to construct or build these cursors is very hard, and you can waste memory. You need a highly skilled person to make it more efficient. It can also have support for Cubes, which is the organization of data in different dimensions by using MDX languages."
 

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."
"Pricing is reasonable for small organizations, but the scaling increases the price."
"The price could be cheaper."
"The price of SQL Server could be better in the African market. The licensing model needs to be improved, it is confusing."
"Licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis."
"The price of the solution is fine."
"The licenses are purchased annually."
"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."
"There is a subscription that needs to be purchased to use the solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
23%
University
9%
Manufacturing Company
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: May 2026.
903,067 professionals have used our research since 2012.