do you have existing software that you NEED to use, if so things get a bit more complicated. If however you are going to write your own software then things are a lot easier (assuming you can program a pc, or are willing to learn)
Visual basic is easy to learn, and can be easily programmed to talk to your PIC using the MSCOMM control.
Some topics to research might be
**broken link removed**
Mscomm Control and Visual BASIC
**broken link removed**
They should give you the basics for talking to the PC from the PIC, what you do once it gets their is up to you.
I did a project like this a while back (unfortunatly i dont have the code anymore) it was a DirectX model of my house (3D shadowy/wireframe) with all the sensors on it, and they flashed red when activated, it was connected to a PIC16F877 via a serial port.
The pic interfaced with the sensors and the PC made it look good!
I used 2byte pairs for the sensors, the first byte was the ID of the sensor, the second was either a 0 or 1 to indicate if it was 'triggered' or not.
It was one of they cheezy moments when you watch a film and they have a super cool security system with the dots showing where in the building people are - and think 'I could do that!', i never got the locators working but I couldnt afford the longrange RFID tags and readers at that time.