How can I query my xml file?

XPath provides a means of querying down into XML documents: http://www.w3.org/TR/xpath Look at 'Location Paths' for the syntax relevant to your particular query. Apache Xalan implements the XPath 1.0 recommendation: http://xml.apache.org/xalan-j/index.html Typically, you'd write a XSL styelsheet that uses an XPath expression to traverse your document tree and select the appropriate nodes. You can also use xpath programatically from a Java class; Xalan provides an API for that, too.