I can't really say much about XML, since I don't know very much about it, but I *will* say that Data::Dunper has served me well for what you are talking about
Dr. Mu.
Yes of course, updating the "database" can be a heck of a time, especiallly via a web server (ie: CGI script). Only one process can update the file at a time, otherwise you get scrambled files, race conditions appear, etc. etc.
This means that you must lock a "lock file" before dealing with the data file, so that only one process can access the script at a time. This works great for low-traffic sites, but have more than one access to the script every second, and serving time slows down big time, as each new request has to "get in line" to have access to the database.
