What is the easiest way to start a meta analysis?

I used Revman program to do my meta analysis and generated the nice Forest plot two years ago. It worked for me very well at that time. Revman is a free program developed for Cochrane Review - the most reliable reviews for evidence-based medicine.

http://community.cochrane.org/tools/review-production-tools/revman-5

Read the instruction and tutorial about how to use this program. The algorithm used in this program is described in the attached file (following the weblink below).

http://community.cochrane.org/tools/review-production-tools/revman-5/resources
http://community.cochrane.org/sites/default/files/uploads/inline-files/RevMan_5.3_User_Guide.pdf

One of the authors Julian Higgins, is one of the speakers in last year’s Meta analysis workshop sponsored by SAMSI. His topic then is titled "Practical obstables in Meta Analysis".

Since I am a heavy SAS user, I also try to do meta analysis in SAS. The following references may be useful:

• The SAS book "Integrating Results through Meta-Analytic Review Using SAS Software"
• A book titled "Conducting Meta-Analysis Using SAS"
• Some Meta Analysis Stuff collected by David Wilson