A ubiquitous language used by instruments is SCPI. Download the programmers manual for the instrument take a look at commands. You want to initialize (connect or open via Visa session), *idn? (send query instrument identity), read the *idn? response (Visa Read) and close the Visa session.
Maybe someone can post a simple example... once you can do that (i.e. write, query and read), you can send the instrument SCPI commands for control or query. *footnote - you may have to sent the instrument from its hardware button for SCPI language...
