Timeout in resultHandler for HTTPService request

Question

Hello All,
I have a flex application where I am calling to get data in XML format.  The data file most likely will contain 10's of thousands of records (in most cases).  What I am experiencing is a timeout in my rHandle function (see code snippets below):
Error #1502 A Script has executed for longer than the default timeout period of 15 seconds
My question/problem has 2 parts.
1) how do you disable the timeout?
2) the reading/parsing of the XML data seems to take waaaay too long.  Is there a better way?
I put an Alert message at the top of the result handler function and it didnt trigger before the timeout message triggered.  I am reading what could be 10's of thousands of records.  Is there a better (and FASTER) way to do this than to read in XML format?  Currently, no matter what I set the httpservice requests 'timeout' value to doesnt seem to have any effect.  I get a timeout after 15 seconds every time.  I have tried setting the timeout value to -1 (as documentation suggested) and/or to some very large value (say, 1200...20 minutes).  Any and all help is appreciated.   Here is the code and an example of the XML file
private var contactService:HTTPService = new HTTPService();
private var xData:XML;
private var T_Data:ArrayCollection = new ArrayCollection();
private function get_data():void
   contactService.url="data/big_data.xml";
   contactService.format = "e4x";
   contactService.addEventListener(ResultEvent.RESULT, rHandle);
   contactService.requestTimeout = -1;
   contactService.send();
private function rHandle(event:ResultEvent):void
   var i:int;
   xData = event.result as XML;
   for  (i=0; i < xData.el.length(); i++)
      var t:Object = new Object();
      t.cid = xData.el[i].cid; 
      t.date = xData.el[i].date; 
      t.y_axis = xData.el[i].y_axis;
      T_Data.addItem(t);
<mx:PlotChart.....DataProvider="{T_Data}"
   <mx:horizontalAxis>
      <mx:DateTimeAxis />
   </mx:horizontalAxis>
   <mx:verticalAxis>
      <mx:LinearAxis />
   </mx:verticalAxis>
   <mx:series>
      <mx:PlotSeries id=... yField="y_axis" xField="date" />
   </mx:series>
</mx:PlotChart.....
contents of big_data.xml
<xml.....>
<data>
<el><cid>1</cid><date>1243814400982</date><y_axis>10</y_axis></el>
<el><cid>2</cid><date>1243814401982</date><y_axis>12</y_axis></el>
<el><cid>3</cid><date>1243814451982</date><y_axis>44</y_axis></el>
<el><cid>4</cid><date>1243815451730</date><y_axis>21</y_axis></el>
.........(10s of thousands of records like this)....
</data>

Answer 1

Through trial and error, and some investigation, I found that the solution to my problem was to use remoteobject rather than httpservice.
Flex doesnt seem to handle httpservice calls with XX meg feeds very well.