Each DAW stores content in their own proprietary format. There are some folks who tried to write some converters, with limited success. It requires fully understanding the source and target file formats (which are not necessarily published).

There are any number of powerful DAWs, although none will "be" Sonar, as each approach audio creating/editing/mixing/mastering in their own way. If you log onto the Sonar User Forum, you'll see lots of folks discussing what they are doing and how they are handling it (and also a lot of griping about the current state of Cakewalk and Gibson).

While not necessarily endorsing any one product (everyone's workflow is different) many have switched to PreSonus Studio One v3, or Reaper v5, or Magix Samplitude Pro X3, or Cubase, or MixBus. For many of these, you can still find some nice cross-grade offers, but I suspect the further away we get from the demise of Cakewalk, the fewer the offers will be available.

From what I've seen, the best bet is (while you can still use Sonar) is to save each track as a WAV file (even MIDI tracks, assuming you want to preserve the current sound you get). You should also save each project with MIDI as a MIDI file, although you will lose all softsynth and effects settings when you bring it into a new DAW. So, that would mean taking notes about each project so as to re-apply settings and effects you made within the confines of a new DAW after you import the file.

Once you have everything exported, you can import the content into the new DAW, but you'll still have to do do a lot of tweaking once there. Unfortunately, unlike notation with MusicXML, there isn't a common DAW format that you can save/export to and then import in to another DAW. They each do their own thing.

John

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