Visual Studio Next Generation: Language Enhancements

Shared members are data and function members of classes that are shared by all instances of the class. Sharing a single instance of a data member or function among all instances of a class is required in a Visual Basic application with inheritance. A shared data member is one that all instances of a class share. A shared data member exists independently of any particular instance of the class. A shared method is a method, which unlike normal methods, is not implicitly passed an instance of the class. For this reason no unqualified references to non-shared data members is allowed in a shared method. Public shared members can be accessed remotely and they can be late-bound from an instance of the class.