Possible to invoke an executable outside of AIR?

Question

Is it possible to launch an executable from an AIR
application? I've searched everywhere but can't find anything. I
want to use an AIR application to formulate a string of arguments
that get passed to an executable. For example, the simplistic
approach would be to open a command line, pass the string
"c:\application.exe /if="c:\input.xml" /of="c:\output.xml" and let
the command line utility execute it. Or I could call
application.exe from AIR and pass it the arguments skipping the
command line altogether. Either way is fine, but can either be
done?

Answer 1

One workaround I've finally gotten around to implementing....
I wrote a small webserver that my air app downloads and drops
into the user's startup folder. When the user reboots, the server
begins executing. I can then invoke system commands by simply
hitting a well-defined url on the local webserver.
It's reasonably secure, as it only knows how to execute a
fixed set of commands that are pre-programmed into the server, and
I can customize the server to invoke the cmds I need for a
particular application.
It could be easily modified to be more generic in what it
executes, but there's more of a security risk in that.