What type of application should I use for large XML data processing?

I am using Flash to create a form application where people can select up to 4 querying options (using comboboxes), hit a submit button and retrieve data from an XML file based on their selections. The data they receive becomes a list of titles linked to corresponding PDFs that are located on a CD. All of this will eventually be on a CD, hence the reason for Flash and not PHP or something web-based. Because of usability reasons I am pretty limited in my options, but I am having such a frustrating time with Flash because of the size of the XML file and other factors (mainly I don't agree with actionscript for this kind of project).





Does anyone know of a better way or have any suggestions? VB? AJAX? C? At this point, I don't really care what language, but if someone has done anything similar and thinks they might have a better solution than Flash, please let me know.





Thanks,


Jen

What type of application should I use for large XML data processing?
ajax falls apart on a cd, nothing is mime-typed properly to get xml as xml. ajah, still works.





c %26amp; vb programs need different versions for different operating systems, mac/xp/linux/vista/dos.





the size of the xml matters to all web based apps, 4meg is the largest that you can be sure will work for all browsers.





Whatever you do, make sure the search is fast, optimized for the data, and doesn't read through the full dataset for each search.





Flash is cute stuff, but will all your users have it installed?





UPDATE:





You would have to break down that 4.3 meg file!!! depending on what it looks like, shorter tag names, more attributes and less tags, or discarding the xml in favor of tab delimited data would work!
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