So far, SAP has had a mixed track record on HANA education, such as the "severely lacking" product documentation available at the time of its general availability launch last year, Reed said. "I've never heard anyone describe the documentation SAP has provided as a strength of the product."

But SAP has succeeded in piquing the interest of its community, Reed added. "Most SAP professionals who are serious about SAP are interested in HANA and trying to understand it," he said. "They're trying to make sure they don't let the community down. But like everything else the report card comes in the follow-through."

This is just the latest bid by SAP to lure developers to HANA, preceded by its announcement of free developer instances of the database on Amazon Web Services. More than 200 HANA instances have been created there since SAP's mid-May announcement, company technology chief and executive board member Vishal Sikka said during a webcast event held Monday to mark the anniversary.

HANA is the brainchild of Sikka and company co-founder Hasso Plattner, and has held center stage in SAP's marketing efforts since its initial announcement in May 2010.

Sikka spent an hour extolling HANA's initial success in the market during the webcast, and alluded to a number of pending announcements.