PHP & os/390 browse VSAM?

Hi all, I realize this may be a very obtuse question that perhaps no one out there has an answer to, but here goes.... Does anyone know how I could use PHP (or PERL, but prefer PHP)to establish a connection to a mainframe (os/390), then browse a VSAM file to look for a certain date range, extract those dates into an array, then close the connection. I know how to issue an ftp function in PHP to actually download the VSAM file I need...however, this file is extremely large (which presents connection problems, etc). Any ideas?? Thanks. Gary