Q: How can you evaluate a product if you cannot try it.
Welcome to the cloud
Use the open source installation for the platform as a service. This way you can test things on your computers and transfer them to the host if you like it. I dare say that it is better to use a freely available language (Python, Java) and work in something (GAE) that looks like a regular API. Hadoop may even be an alternative, and use something like Cloudera.
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