Right now, SAS and VB serve different goals. There is no reason not to use both. Even assuming microsoft pulls off VB.NET (and there is no assurance they will, VB.NET is still in beta and a lot of VB people HATE it) there is still a need for the kind of thing SAS does well. I don't even see the market diminishing.

Besides the competitors to VB.NET that have been mentioned here already. there is a company (I don't remember it's name) that is working to build add ons to Unix or Lunix that would allow you to pump information into it the way windows allows you to pump information into to the API. Also, there is something called Curl ( owned by the Curl Corporation) that is supposed to reduce web development time by a factor of 80 or so. If true, that could cook VB's goose or maybe goose VB. I wish both of these companies good luck. The micropigs should have been broken into parts.

Fred