fetching the text value of an element inside an element

We have this situation wherin I should programatically ( Java ) fetch the text value of an element that is inside another element.
Essentially this is the simple value of the xpath expression outer_element/inner_element
1. What is the best XML technology to use in this situation. DOM based parsing and iterating the outer level of elements till I find the inner one, and then fetching its value ? ( We are not considering jdom due to some other reasons )

2. Is using an XSLT processor like xalan an overkill since we do not do any transformation ? Can we get xpath with anything other than a full fledged XSLT processor.

3. Comparing DOM based iteration with an XSLT which is expected to be faster ( I read DOM is used inside XSLT processors )

Thanks for reading

--sony