Calling an external program

Hi,

Is there a stored proc or a function I can call from Query Analyzer to execute another .EXE and return when it's finished?

I'd like something like
SET @.RET = sp_CallEXE('c:\mypath\myprogram.exe myparameters')

(Except for the name of the function, there should be something that does this right? I mean, DTS does it already so it must be referring to a function or a SP.)

I want an answer to so that I can validate that everything went well (hence the @.RET variable)

Thanks,

Skip.xp_cmdshell may help you get where you want, but you'll have security issues to think about. It'll be something like "exec @.ret=master..xp_cmdshell '...'"