XSLT is an ideal tool for pre-digesting large pieces of XML in order to work on them further using any of the perl mods mentioned above. This technique is useful if the original XML contains a large amount of information that is surplus to requirements.

In the original example, the 9000 tags may contain a large number of sub tags, attributes, text etc. which are not required. The XML can be processed into either a simpler form of XML that contains only the required data or even a flat file format that can be parsed line by line using standard techniques.

Pre-processing the original XML using an XSLT engine such as Xalan (either directly or via XML::Xalan) is only going to be worth while if the source XML is large and contains a high proportion of non-essential information.

Inman