Flash Applications

I am looking to create a flash application that will act as a self contained software. It will need to run on a local machine rather than web based, and save all entries made to it.

Basically I am designing a check book in flash. My problems are this:

  1. If I create a flash app and need to save, how can I save to a something on a local machine. Is this even possible. Since MySQL, etc are web based, are there other alternatives?

  2. What is the best way to compile an application? I know there are softwares out there such as, mProjector . Are they needed? I know that you can export out flash as a projector file (.exe) but will this be enough?

Any guidance would be appreciated… Thanks.