Beyond 20/20 Insights: December 2002

In this edition:

1. Beyond 20/20 Donates Software to Children's Aid Society of Eastern Ontario - Canada
2. Announcing New Beyond 20/20 Product Releases
   • Beyond 20/20 Data Connection Wizard
   • Beyond 20/20 Toolkit Version 6.2
3. Upcoming Features in the Next Web Data Server Release
4. A successful Beyond 20/20 User Conference in Paris!
5. Beyond 20/20 Exhibited at NADHO 2002
6. Tip of the Month

Beyond 20/20 Donates Software to Children's Aid Society of Eastern Ontario - Canada (Copy of press release from October 24, 2002)

Children's Aid Societies of Eastern Ontario receive a $50,000 donation from Beyond 20/20

Ottawa, Canada - October 24, 2002 - In recognition of Foster Family Week, which runs from October 20 to 26, 2002, Beyond 20/20 donated a sophisticated online data dissemination package to 12 children's aid societies of Eastern Ontario.

The software will specifically be used for the website: www.fosteradoptwinningkids.com. Launched earlier this year, the website is a starting point where potential foster or adoptive parents can find out what is involved in providing a home for a child in care. An online application form is available for those ready to apply and tips are provided from parents who have already taken on the challenge.

"The goal is to track and monitor activities on the website with a view to ensure every opportunity is met to place as many children with suitable foster or adoptive parents within the region," said Jacquie Woodward, Chairperson for the CAS Eastern Zone Foster Care Collaboration Committee. "The need for additional foster families across the region continues to be great. Beyond 20/20's contribution to our website will enhance our ability to share the successes between our agencies."

Each of the 12 children's aid societies participating in the website will benefit by accessing data online, and using it to compare to their own agencies` statistics. The donated software will make it easy to provide a clear picture of who is visiting the site and how it is being used by prospective foster and adoptive parents.

"We feel that it is Beyond 20/20's responsibility to contribute to the community in which it operates," said Bill Lidington, president of Beyond 20/20 Inc. "We are pleased to assist in any way we can to the well-being of children within our community."

About Children's Aid Societies of Eastern Ontario

On any given day, the 12 children's aid societies in Eastern Ontario care for up to 3000 children and youth. Most are cared for by 1300 foster families, while others are awaiting families to welcome them into their homes.

In Ontario, there are 52 children's aid societies that provide care to almost 16,000 children and youth in over 6,000 foster families last year.

Take a look at the exciting interview Bill Lidington, president of Beyond 20/20 had with an Ottawa local news station.

Announcing New Beyond 20/20 Product Releases

Beyond 20/20 Data Connection Wizard

Beyond 20/20's Data Connection Wizard version 6.2 was released on November 29, 2002.

Here are some excellent new features:

• Create multilingual IVTs
  • Support for up to 12 table languages
  • Multilingual metadata - table, dimension, and item summary notes; footnotes and missing values
  • Multilingual item labels
• Filter your data - With Fact Table Filters, apply filtering operations to up to three data fields from your fact table - either separately or in combination
• Separate decimal settings - Set unique decimals for every item in the measures dimension
• New hierarchy input - Define hierarchies in two ways - Parent/Child and Levels
• Weight fields - Apply a weighting factor to your data
• Item sorting - Define sorting in two ways - by a field in the dimension table, or by the primary key of the fact table
• Trim string records - Automatically trim blank spaces from records to prevent errors in sorting and searching
• Default missing values - When data values are missing, initialize cells to the default missing value or to zeroes
• Defer group calculation - Quickly review table structure and design; defer group calculation until you're ready
• Publish to the Web - With Beyond 20/20 Web Data Server installed, opens IVT Publisher for fast, versatile Web publishing

Beyond 20/20 Toolkit Version 6.2

Beyond 20/20's Toolkit version 6.2 was released on November 29, 2002.

Here are some of the great new features:

• More items per dimension in IVTs - Beyond 20/20 tables can now have up to 500,000 items in one dimension - up from the previous limit of 64,000. (The limit of 2 billion data cells per table still applies.)
• Enhanced Performance - Faster calculation of table data.

Upcoming Features in the Next Web Data Server Release

The next Beyond 20/20 Web Data Server release will be in the first quarter of 2003. There will be great new features, many of which have been requested by clients.

New features include:

• Mapping: Geographic navigation with ESRI integration allows users to easily filter data on the regions of interest. This new feature is a customized service add on. To view a map, please click here.
• Profiles: Administrators and users can save a selection of items for a particular dimension (for example "region"), which will filter on the items of interest. Users can then apply the profile to all reports that contain the "region" dimension.
• Totals and percentages: When enabled by the administrator, users have the option of viewing dynamic totals or percentages on the data they have selected.
• Improved User Interface to provide Netscape version 7 support: Full support for Netscape version 7 Web browser.

Announcing Online Seminar

Beyond 20/20 clients are invited to an online seminar on Thursday, January 9, 2003 at 10:00 a.m. Eastern Time. Beyond 20/20 will discuss the new features, demonstrate how they work and answer your questions about this product release.

Without leaving your office, you can view this demonstration over the Internet, right from your desktop computer! Registration is easy, simply click on this link http://www.beyond2020.com/aboutus/registration1.html to register for the seminar. Within a few days of the demonstration, we will contact you with login and other instructional information.

A Successful Beyond 20/20 User Conference in Paris!

Beyond 20/20 held its 1st Annual User Conference in Paris on October 22-23, 2002. Many current and potential clients attended from all over the world.

It was a valuable experience for everyone. Clients presented how they were using Beyond 20/20 products within their organization, and how it has benefited them and their users to date.

We would like to thank the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for generously letting us host the conference in their office in Paris.

Beyond 20/20 Exhibited at NADHO 2002

Beyond 20/20 exhibited at the National Association for Health Data Organizations (NAHDO) from December 2-3, 2002 in Atlanta, Georgia.

NADHO is a not-for-profit membership organization dedicated to strengthening the nation's health information system. NAHDO brings together a network of state, federal, and private sector technical and policy leaders and consultants each year in its annual meeting. This year's meeting was called Making the Most of Public Health Data: Health Data Initiatives 2003.

For more information about the conference, visit NAHDO's Web site at http://www.nahdo.org/.

This conference was a great success for Beyond 20/20. We demonstrated our new age-adjusted rates and Web mapping capabilities.

Tip of the Month

Statistics Canada uses the Beyond 20/20 Builder to run specific queries against Health microdata files in order to verify summarized data produced with SAS. This is accomplished by defining all of the pertinent variables in the Beyond 20/20 Builder in a source definition file (.IVS). Input variables are then crossed to match the identical conditions used in the SAS syntax (according to an established specification).

Using the drag and drop dimensions feature available in Beyond 20/20, the resulting summarized Beyond 20/20 data file is then structured to match the layout of the SAS output ".CSV" file. Both outputs are copied and pasted into a blank Excel Worksheet.

A simple subtraction algorithm is applied comparing the SAS output against the Beyond 20/20 output. Differences are targeted using the filtering feature in Excel where significant differences can be calculated. These repetitive steps are coded into Visual Basic (VBA) macros to optimize efficiency.

By consulting a minimal list of data cells, they are able to verify an extremely large matrix of data. If significant differences of data are identified, a problem has probably been identified. In that case, SAS syntax or specifications are re-evaluated in order to target the source of the problem.

These simple steps ensure a high degree of quality for the dissemination of Health data on the Web.

Please send us your tip of the month for our next Insights issue. If your tip of the month is selected, you will receive a gift!

All of us at Beyond 20/20 wish you a happy and safe holiday season!