title: Convert Tree Structure Data to XML-- Performance Concerns
body: <p>I have a set of data in tree structure. Currently I save those data to a binary file. The downside is that the sorting, filtering of these data are exceedingly difficult.Not only that, when the data size is large, it's very slow to read them from hard disk into memory.</p>
  
  <p>So I am thinking about saving these tree like data to XML files. The reason I want this is because </p>
  
  <ol>
  <li>XML has got built in library for filtering and data manipulation</li>
  <li>XML manipulation is well supported by community, whereas now I have to support my own data structure manipulation</li>
  </ol>
  
  <p>Given the .Net support for XML, I wonder whether it's faster ( in terms of loading speed) to query data from XML as opposed to query data from binary file? Is there any advantage for me to make the switch? I am pretty sure that as far as programming effort goes, XML beats my own tree data structure hands down, but what about loading speed?</p>