use Perl

As a way to learn more about the various XML technologies, I am working on a project to provide XML versions of various D&D and D20 rules and expansions (new spells, feats, classes...).

My concern has been efficiently storing, searching and recalling such XML files. I haven't come across a suitable tool (Open Source and Free as in Beer) to do this. So I started writing a module that takes an arbitrary XML file, parses it and stuffs it into a database. Once in the database I can use the more familiar SQL for searches.

Now as cool as I think this module could be... I'm not sure it's the right thing to do. But I don't know the toolsets available well enough to find a better method. I'm pretty convinced that a straight flat file format is going to break under the load because of the size (1000's of Feats and Spells, 100's of classes) and the fact that it is a growing dataset

I'm planning to use AxKit to actually serve the data, but how do I store it? Any insights would be invaluable.

Thanks for your time!