First of all this is my first post, so hi to all

i hope this is the right place for this post and i appologise if something similar has been covered already i have read through some of the post and not come accross this answer yet.

I am really new to xml and was hoping that someone could point me in the right direction.

I have a project to complete which is really tight on time and has no budget to buy comercial software. I am failry provicient with php and mysql databases but have never worked with xml files before.

I have several very large xml files and have been looking at the prospect of getting the data into mysql databases simply because this is the way that I am used to working. I have looked at several applications that should be able to interegate the files and put the contents into mysql databases but they either fall short of my expectations or are very expensive. The data in the xml files needs to be queried at several levels e.g. poplulate combo boxes for filtering.

I have recentely become aware of xslt and xpath and was wondering if my time would best be served by learning all about this.

so the question I was hoping for help with is when working with very large xml files is it better to use xslt and xpath or should I continue to try and find a way to get them into mysql databases and deal with them form there.

also the data which is providing in xml will be updated daily, i would wont to automate this maybe using cron or something at the moment though my concern is just the best method to manage the data, i only mention this here incase it effects the decision of what method to work with,

thank you in advance for any advice you can offer.