connect outlook and/or exchange contacts folder odbc data source

Hi NickUpson,
> run offline
What do you mean by this?  Do you envision the processing running like a scheduled task?

Cheers!

We could accept it running every night = offline or, ideally, completely syncronised, getting the data whenever it's accessed

Sounds like you want to use a public folder.  Have you considered that option, and if so is there a reason it doesn't suit your needs?

a public folder is fine, the problem is how to connect a public folder to an odbc datasource

Any custom fields in the Outlook contacts?

Is this importing from Access?

standard default outlook contacts fields but no it's not access (actually firebird) therefore only accessible via ODBC

Are you looking to create a custom solution yourself?  

If not there are probably utilities which will suit your needs.  See this:
http://www.mapistore.com/Outlook/Contacts/Review_00766_index.html (free download)
or
http://www.hidownload.com/products/6/34/6-34-666.htm (free trial $65 to purchase)

Several other solutions are listed at this site:
http://www.slipstick.com/addins/groupcontacts.htm

>getting the data whenever it's accessed
Depending on the size of the database that doesn't seem very practical and I don't know how you'd go about trapping an event indicating that someone was accessing the contacts.  It'd make more sense to have an external process that was kicked off whenever the database changed, syncing Outlook to it.  I don't know anything about Firebird, in fact I've never heard of it before.  If it's programmable, then maybe something could be written into it that'd run the syncing process immediately after any changes were made to the data.  An alternative would be to write an update routine in VB or VBScript and schedule it to ran however often you deem necessary using the Windows Task Scheduler.

Ideally when someone accesses the folder, an sql statement would run to populate it so no problem with events

I don't believe that's going to be possible.  That's what I was mentioning, there's no event I know of that's triggered when a person accesses a folder.  

a process that ran every night to reload them would be acceptable

Do you use all the contact fields or only a subset?  If the latter, which ones?  Also, do the database fields have the same names?

not all of them, there must be 100. just basic ones like name, company, business phone, busiesss fax, etc.
the database fields don't have the same names but I could probably put a view in between if necessary