You can't really advise using XML::Simple without knowing what kind of XML is being exchanged: if it contains mixed content then XML::Simple will not be very useful. Don't get me wrong, I love XML::Simple when appropriate, but it just should not be recommended blindly.

You can try this at home to see wht I mean BTW:

perl -MXML::Simple -MYAML -e'print Dump XMLin "<doc>\
text with <b>mixed content</b>:\
you see that <tt>XML::Simple</tt>\
kinda <i>messes it-up</i>.</doc>"'
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Other recommended solutions include XML::LibXML (if you can install it), XML::TreeBuilder, one of the XML::SAX modules, or XML::Twig (of course!)...