Peter,
I agree with your advice about SAS Viewer. But, as I think you implied, the Universal Viewer serves as an excellent case in point for the current argument. When I loaded it I was expecting something that was going to deprecate my old SAS Viewer. I found the exact opposite.
Nick appears quite willing to let the rest of us lose as long as he gets what he wants. My point is that what many of us like about SAS are some of the older features and SAS should have enough developmental monies to still enhance the old while developing the new.
And, Nick, yes, .NET programmers are a lot easier to find but, in my case, not .NET programmers who are also statisticians and who understand insurance. Sure, the .NET programmers could put together a GUI interface a lot faster (and one that would probably even look better), but my use of SAS/AF has nothing to do with building GUI interfaces. We are using a language that the staff understand and are able to easily develop fairly complex iterative processes, yet still know what is happening and why and how to test and, when necessary, change a process in a defensible manner.
If you don't need such capabilities, and I presume there are many who fall into that category, then of course you don't need it. All I ask is that SAS keeps in mind that you don't represent all the rest of us. I have no problem paying SAS to develop things I don't need, but do have a problem if I don't see enough of those monies being spent on the things I do need.
Art
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