Populating an XML index is parallelized, providing both inter-document and intra-document parallelism, by using multiple pull-type parser processes to parse respective XML documents in parallel and to call respective ‘instances’ of the function that generates the index entries based on parsed XML node information. The function is configured to operate according to a cursor-type interface model, whereby each function instance can operate on one node at a time in a controlled pull manner rather than in an uncontrolled streaming manner. Hence, the index load procedure flow can be in the control of an application or routine, via the pull parsers, rather than in the control of a serial stream-based parser.