The problem with XML::Simple is that unless you fiddle with ForceArray and ForceContent the resulting data structure is not consistent. If some tag sometimes has text content and attributes and sometimes only the content, you get a hash once and a scalar later. If some tag is repeated within another tag once, but occurs only once the other time, you get array of hashes/scalars the first time and one hash/scalar the second.

If you know your data you can set the XML::Simple's options accordingly. Or you can ask XML::Rules to infer the rules from either the DTD or a (few) example(s) and obtain a consistent datastructure almost identic to the one created by a well set XML::Simple.

How effective are Rules with large documents depends on the rules. That's what specifies whether you keep all the data from the document or whether you filter the bits you do not need as you go or process parts of the XML and forget the data you no longer need.