Attempt to create Plugin for Component

[s4e]

Hello friends,

I've been reading over Joomla development documentation for awhile, but haven't picked up as much as I would like. What I'm trying to accomplish seems very simple on the surface, but navigating the Joomla framework is quite a challenge.

I'm curious how difficult it would be, or if it's even possible, to create a plugin that can add an additional menu item to a component. This menu item would either just be a button that would simply export a custom database query I made for this component into CSV, or it would display a view that would possibly have a button to do this.

Can a plugin be used in this capacity? Specifically, can a plugin even add menu items to a component? (I feel like I've seen this happen before with plugins I've downloaded).

If so, can a plugin access the "model" of a component and create a custom sql query to pull the specific combination of database fields I'm seeking to retrieve from that component's database tables?

Sorry if I sound like a complete novice. My Joomla development so far has been handicapped by using cheats like the component called "Jumi", which let's you embed PHP code directly into your Joomla articles. However, I would really like to learn how to do things the right way using the Joomla developer framework.