XPath using Java 1.5 and above, without external dependencies:
String xml = "<resp><status>good</status><msg>hi</msg></resp>";
XPathFactory xpathFactory = XPathFactory.newInstance();
XPath xpath = xpathFactory.newXPath();
InputSource source = new InputSource(new StringReader(xml));
String status = xpath.evaluate("/resp/status", source);
System.out.println("satus=" + status);