About transformation from xml to html

Question

Hello all, I have just learnt xml for a week.
I am preparing to use servlet and Jsp to convert xml to html,
but I wonder how to make the convertion.
Since the xml source is not in well design,
I would like to ask what does the suitable way to do.
The xml source is about the typesetting in a page.
<book> element indicate a book
<page> - element indicate a page
attribute:
id - id of the page
height - height of the page
width - width of the page
<area> element indicate a area
attribute:
pos - in the form of "x1, y1, x2, y2",
(x-coordindate starting from left side of the page)
(y coordinate starting form top side oft the page)
<line> element indicate a line
attribute:
start - the x-coordinate, starting from left
width - the width of the line
<words> element indicate a word
attribute:
top - the y-coordinate, starting from top
height - the height of the words
all of them are defined as empty tag, except <book>
example:
<book>
     <page id=1 height=100, width=200/>
     <area pos"10,10,20,20"/>
     <line start=11 width=5/>
     <words top=11, height=5>
     word1
     <words top=16, height=2/>
     word2
     <page id=2 height=100, width=250/>
</book>
I would like to transfer page, area, line+words into 3 different of layer in html.
I have try to use xslt style sheet (xsl),
but I find difficulty getting information from element to form a layer and building up the template.
For example, how can I get attributes info from two elements and generate a layer(html).
Or, does it better to do the transformation in servlet and read the xml as a DOM tree?
Furthermore, I would like to ask does it need much time to convert source to html,
as there is nearly 4 thousand line in a xml file?
Thanks!!

Answer 1

Steve tks for Your suggestions, but my problem is a little different from the one You illustrate (or I didn't understand well Yur suggestion).
1 - I don't use BC4J in this project
2 - I don't need to insert data in the DB but only receive the data from an HTML form as a XML Document.
I understand the idea You gave me would be a good basis for the solution but I don't understand how I can apply it.
TIA
Tullio