25. The computer-implemented method of claim 24 , wherein in a third instance, the calendar subscription definition further comprises one or more additional transformation rules for transforming the data contained in the fields of the calendar events from the publication, in which instance processing each calendar subscription definition by the subscription agent further comprises applying the one or more additional transformation rules to the calendar events so that the field values of the qualified calendar events are transformed before loading them into the calendar database; wherein in the third instance, the calendar subscription definition further comprises one or more transformation criteria for determining whether or not the transformation rules should be applied to a calendar event from the publication, in which instance processing each calendar subscription definition by the subscription agent further comprises evaluating the one or more transformation criteria for each calendar event before conditionally applying the relative transformation rules to the calendar events that meet the required transformation criteria; wherein in a fourth instance, the calendar subscription definition further comprises a set of criteria for qualifying calendar events from the publication for inclusion in and/or exclusion from the set of calendar events from the publication that is loaded into a calendar of the subscriber, in which instance processing each calendar subscription definition by the subscription agent further comprises applying the qualifying criteria to identify the subset of calendar events from the publication that will be loaded into the subscriber calendar, wherein the subscription agent does not load those calendar events excluded from that subset into the subscriber calendar.
24. The computer-implemented method of claim 23 , wherein in a first instance, the transformation rule for mapping the calendar events to one or more specific categories in a calendar subscription definition maps all calendar events contained in the designated publication for that calendar subscription definition to a single specified category, in which instance the subscription agent performs the removal process for such a calendar subscription definition by removing all existing events in the subscriber calendar that belong to that specified one category for that calendar subscription definition before loading the calendar events from the defined publication of that calendar subscription definition; wherein in a second instance, the transformation rule for mapping the calendar events to one or more specific categories in a calendar subscription definition determines the mapped category for each calendar event contained in the designated publication for that calendar subscription definition by deriving the category value by pre-pending/appending a prefix and/or suffix, respectively, to a source field from calendar event, in which instance the subscription agent performs the removal process for such a calendar subscription definition by removing all existing events whose categories start with and/or end-with the designated prefix and/or suffix, respectively, for that calendar subscription definition before loading the calendar events from the defined publication of that calendar subscription definition.