The XML Generation. A question for real heroes and soon-to-be ones.

Hello folks: I am back from the Falkland Islands and now looking for a possiblity to easily to manipulate a 20k XML file. I used XML_Tree and tried XML_XPath, PHP SAX and PHP XMLDOM (extension), but somehow they seem to me like hunting a single ant with an atomic bomb. I am looking for a simple way to : 1) Read an XML string into something like a DOM/Tree 2) Find a specific node by identidier (something like ECMA/Javascript's ->FindElementById('funkyFrog')-Method (where funkyFrog is the identifier) 3) Manipulate some attributes of it 4) Render the new tree/model back into a string How would a real guru handle this most elegantly (OOPHP ;)? Any advice would be more than welcome.. Cheers {Matt}*