Calling an External Program to get Data from a Device connected to the com port

Hi everyone, Got a new one across my desk this morning that I need a little direction on. First, this is on a Windows 2000 Server running PHP 4.04, IIS5 and MySQL. Second, I want to call a dos window(cmd.exe) and execute a couple of commands that will communicate with a lab device connected to a com port on the server. I then need to capture the output and save it in MySQL. Anyone done anything like this before? And advice would be helpful. Thanks, Robert