+3  A: 

XPathDocument provides fast, read-only access to the contents of an XML document using XPath.

Or use an XmlTextReader (fastest) which provides fast, forward-only, non-cached access to XML data.

Mitch Wheat  2010-08-20 11:04:02
Unfortunately XPath is no option, since the name of the document element and child elements is not known at this time. I'll check out the XmlTextReader. Thanks for the link with further information :)
peter  2010-08-20 11:10:21
@peter you don't need to know the name of the child elements - you can use wildcards. I believe `*/*` should do the trick (not tested)
Kragen  2010-08-20 11:11:55
@kragen thanks for the tip. didn't think about that. will post my solution as soon i have it finished
peter  2010-08-20 11:51:45

related questions

Displaying Flash content in a C# WinForms application
How to get the value of built, encoded ViewState?
Unhandled Exception Handler in .NET 1.1
How do I connect to a database and loop over a recordset in C#?
How do I most elegantly express left join with aggregate SQL as LINQ query
Get a new object instance from a Type in C#
.NET Testing Framework Advice
Automatically update version number
What is the difference between an int and an Integer in Java/C#?
How to write to Web.Config in Medium Trust ?
WinForms ComboBox data binding gotcha
How do you sort a C# dictionary by value?
Adding Scripting functionality to .NET applications
Floating Point Number parsing: Is there a Catch All algorithm?
How do I print an HTML document from a web service?
Decoding T-SQL CAST in C#/VB.net
Anatomy of a "Memory Leak"
How do I get a distinct, ordered list of names from a DataTable using Linq
Reliable Timer in a Console Application
How do I fill a DataSet or a DataTable from a LINQ query resultset ?
What's the difference between Math.Floor() and Math.Truncate() in .NET?
How do I calculate relative time?
How do I calculate someone's age in C#?
Are there any conversion tools for porting Visual J# code to C#?
When setting a form's opacity should I use a decimal or double?