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

{My apologies for not having been logged in earlier when I suggested XSLT}


As you said: "source XML is large" and contains "non-essential information". His example case was "large" (3.3MB) and searching solely for tags of type <message>. That is a very simple XSLT to output as HTML (fragmentary example, please don't carp about the syntax):

 <ul>
  <xsl:for-each select="message">
   <li><xsl:value-of select="current()" /></li>
  </xsl:for-each>
 </ul>
[download]

XSLT can convert XML directly into XML, HTML, or even perl:

 @messages = (
               <xsl:for-each select="message">
                 "<xsl:value-of select="current()" />",
               </xsl:for-each>
             );
[download]

I wouldn't want to comment further without a better understanding of the actual "processing" to be done, but the simple example presented in the question is practically a textbook case for XSLT.

Whatever. Use the tools you like.