Accessing a user's Outlook Calendar via a sharepoint webpart possible?
 

Accessing Outlook Calendar from Sharepoint webpart.

Hi all,

I need to create a relatively simple Sharepoint 2003 Webpart that is able
to:
a) Read and write to a user's Outlook calendar.
b) Read and write to an external MS SQL 2000 database.

MY points:
1. I have created and deployed a 'Hello World' Web part on our Sharepoint
intranet successfully.
2. I don't know how to access a user's Outlook calendar. We're using
Exchange 2003 + Outlook 2003.
2.1 I created a basic .NET Outlook add-in to read&write calendar entries
for users, but each user needs to install this application on their local
machines. This is not ideal.
2.2 There is a 'standard' webpart in Sharepoint 2003 that can (only)view a
user's calendar in Sharepoint. It does this by you entering in the link to
the Exchange server as it uses Outlook Web Access (OWA). This is not much
help.
2.3 In the Sharepoint 2003 SDK, I couldn't find any Object Models to access
office applications: nor Outlook. I 'can' use the Outlook Object

I program in C# and prefer to use .NET 2.0. Is this possible as I know that
Sharepoint only uses 1.1. Should I wait for the next version of Sharepoint
(as it is ASP.NET 2.0-friendly), or will I still have the same problems?

This is probably an advanced question, but basically I need to know how to
access a particular user's Outlook Calendar Items programatically via a
Sharepoint web part. Any advice or tips would be greatly appreciated.

Regards,
Jack.