#!/usr/bin/perl
use warnings;
use strict;
use XML::Simple qw/XMLin XMLout/;

my $file = shift || die "Must supply xml file";
open FH, '<', $file or die "Cannot open $file for reading: $!";
my $document = do { local $/; <FH> };
$XML::Simple::PREFERRED_PARSER = 'XML::LibXML::SAX';
my $ref = XMLin( $document );

__END__
Output:
8787248
real    0m1.293s
user    0m0.752s
sys     0m0.526s