You'll find the perl-xml mailing list to be an invaluable help - I know I have. Personally I like Matts XML::SAX::PurePerl. However, if speed is of importance (and you don't mention that it is) then XML::SAX::PurePerl (because of the very fact that it's written entirely in perl) is not the fastest kid on the block - albeit a nice module. Even though it has fallen out of the limelight, XML::Parser is stll pretty speedy because of expat (C prog). One of my co-workers wrote a quick benchmark suite that compared the many XML modules and XML::Parser came up on top for speed - again second hand info so your mileage may vary...