This is obviously the most expensive option, and only really feasible if you are an end user client of SAP who wishes to use SAP HANA as the database for enterprise applications.

The purchase of a SAP HANA license gives access to the SAP In-Memory download section on the SAP Software Download Center (SWDC) website, as shown in the following screenshot:

In order to access the SWDC website, you'll need a SAP Service Marketplace login and password (also known as an S-User, or OSS username).

You can access the SWDC at https://service.sap.com/swdc.

The SAP HANA section can be found by following the path Software Downloads | Installations and Upgrades | A-Z Index | H | SAP In-Memory (SAP HANA).

If your Marketplace username is not authorized to access the SAP HANA downloads, you will see a Not available content error. If this is the case, you might like to look at the second option for SAP HANA access, via a cloud-based service.

The downloads available include upgrades to the SAP HANA server, as well as downloads for the client software, the SAP HANA Studio. Unfortunately, the Studio cannot be downloaded on its own—the whole SAP HANA bundle needs to be downloaded. The bundle contains updates to the server software as well as the Studio (for Windows and Linux) and driver components for all supported architectures. This represents nearly 5 GB of data, and might take a little while, depending on your network connection. Once the download has finished, decompress the archive—it's a Windows self-extracting archive. The following screenshot shows the subfolders created after extraction, containing the software for different uses and different machines:

The SAP HANA Studio installations can be found in the following folders:

Once you have located these folders, you can skip to the Running the installation section.

If you don't have access to a real SAP HANA appliance on-site, you can purchase access to SAP HANA via a cloud-based service. In this way you don't have any up-front payment to make, and you pay for SAP HANA only when you use it. This might be a viable solution for testing, validation, or infrequently-used servers.

On the SAP Community Network (SCN) website, you can see the list of supported cloud services, as well as the prices for each, and the technical specifications of their virtual machines. The web address for this information is http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-31722.

At the time of writing, the website looked like this:

The setup documentation is very complete, and provides a step-by-step procedure for creating your account with your chosen service provider, and then setting up your HANA instance on their systems.

Just follow the instructions to get set up.

Once you have access to SAP HANA in the cloud, you can download the Studio software. The download link is at the bottom of the same page. Alternatively, a direct link to the Developer edition of the Studio software is http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/go/portal/prtroot/docs/webcontent/uuid/10e6e3ff-6081-2f10-e690-829e62f29a26.

Once you've access to your SAP HANA instance and downloaded the software, you can skip to the Running the installation section.

If you are just starting out with SAP HANA, and don't necessarily want to spend money on testing the system, you can ask SAP for a free 30-day trial of the system. This will give you 120 hours of server time (five calendar days), which you have to use within a 30-day period. The server can be accessed in the cloud, following the instructions you will receive in the invitation e-mail from SAP.

To request access, just go to http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-28191 for full information. The form you will need to fill in is at http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/index?rid=/webcontent/uuid/a01f2bae-82d8-2e10-f3ac-b33d4c919918.

The form will ask you to enter an access code. If you don't have one, just leave the form blank. The access code is only needed if you received an e-mail from SAP asking you to test SAP HANA, not the other way round!

If you access SAP HANA from the free trial, you don't need to download the Studio, as SAP preinstalls it on your virtual machine. You can therefore skip the following Running the installation section, and go straight to the Welcome to the SAP HANA Studio section.