In other words, you're hand-coding any searches you might need to do and iterating through datastructures that you create every time using an XML parser. And you're wondering why your system is slow? If you profile, I'll bet that the problem you're running into is in one or both of these places:
- Your XML parser is fast, but your usage isn't. 10-to-1 you're using the Tree option of XML::Parser, which is the slowest option.
- Once you have this data in memory, you're not working with them correctly. Algorithm choice is the second largest factor in runtime performance (after database (mis)usage).
Also, if you're reading larger XML files (say, for your default.xml), then perl has to allocate RAM for the data structures. Depending on your OS, this could be up to 10% of your runtime.
The proper solution, in case you're wondering, is to use some sort of database and export to XML as needed. So, use either something like MySQL (if you want a RDBMS and are comfortable with it) or a DBM solution could be DBM::Deep or BerkleyDB.
In other words, solve the problem at hand first, then extend the solution. Baby steps.
My criteria for good software:
- Does it work?
- Can someone else come in, make a change, and be reasonably certain no bugs were introduced?