Ok. Let's see...

The xml result consists of 'articles', where each row starts with 'article', containing 36 attributes (There is some header data also) 
<response>
<serv>
<host>xxx</host>
<app>yyy</app>
<port>12345</port>
</serv>
<function>
<query>
<func>aaa</func>
<parameters>
<parameter>
<name>bbb</name>
<value>1</value>
</parameter>
<parameter>
<name>ccc</name>
<value>10</value>
</parameter>
<parameter>
<name>filter</name>
<value>ggg</value>
</parameter>
</parameters>
</query>
<result>
<articles>
<!- article starts here ->
<article>
<attribute1>..</attribute1>
...
<attribute36>..</attribute36>
</article>
</articles>
</result>
<time>13</time>
</function>
</response>

[download]

Every article entry varies from c:a 1.4 - 2.6 kb in size, which gives us an average of 2 kb/article. The number of articles varies from 1-36 (it's hard to give an average here, since it's varies a lot), so let's say that it varies between 2-72 kb using the average value, so let's say 1-100 kb to be on the safe side.
So, it's not really that much data to process. As you said I can limit the size of the resultset, but I want to calculate using these values, also to be on the safe side

The MySQL database is a bottleneck because it holds so much more data than just article information. The new data source (which I can't reveal) is designed for just this kind of data, and will provide better performance.So, I'm basically tries to make the parse as good as possible compared to the "query".

In reply to Re^2: XSL transformation vs. parsing of html - Performance benefits by DreamT
in thread XSL transformation vs. parsing of html - Performance benefits by DreamT

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