opc.three (2/25/2011)
Sorry for the hasty reply initially...Some options are to run SQL Server Express Edition on your Exchange server so you can use ExOLEDB locally. This could let you bridge to/from your dedicated SQL Server instance by having stored procs on SQL Express instance that do your querying locally to the Exchange server and then have a Linked Server from your dedicated SQL instance to your SQL Express instance to execute the procs and retrieve the results you want. SQL Express is free (you mentioned cost as a factor). Express supports Linked Servers and remote connections.
Or as the article below states (which I can tell you have already seen) you can use alternative client access methods like CDO, MAPI or WebDAV.
See Caveats: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa142634(v=exchg.65).aspx
It's OK friend.
Actually I was also going in that path, to install SQL Express on Exchange server and use it as a bridge between the production SQL and the Exchange server. But we have another issue there. The messaging team guys are not allowing for an installation of SQL Express on Exchange server. :crazy: So I've to think of alternatives. I've gone through the link provided by you. Thanks for that. I will have a detailed look. Also, when I went through the various linked server providers available in SQL Server, I found one called "Microsoft OLEDB provider for Outlook search", but for my surprise no details available anywhere regarding the same.
--Sankar--
Live in the present