maximum size for xml files

Question

whats your rule of thumb for maximum size for xml files.

What if I ask maximum no of records, and one record have 10 values for instance? Another condition is we are

Answer 1

I think it depends on the context, where the file comes from/is generated from, what you are going to do with it, the bandwidth of any connection it has to pass through, system RAM size etc?

what is your context?

Answer 2

My rule is that if it's too slow to do what I want, then it's too big, and your data probably needs to be moved to some other format... database or such.

Traversing XML nodes or using XPath can be a dog.