PHP script: need a scheduled task!!!

Is there a way to schedule a php script to run at a certain time, such as with the Windows Task Scheduler. I need to query a database once a day at midnight. In Perl, I would simply use the Windows Task Scheduler to execute the Perl script in the shell. However, with PHP, my script is web-based, and can only be executed via a web-browser. A task CAN be scheduled to open an Internet Explorer window at any given time. However, it CAN'T be configured to go to a specific web page. Any suggestions? I've heard that PHP can be compiled to run from the command prompt (which would theoretically solve my problem), but I'm not ready to pursue that route. Thanks. -zb