get and set attribute value of <xsl:Template> with xalan

With ASP using MSXML calls like this:

objDOM.selectSingleNode(.....),
getAttributeValue(.....),
setAttributeValue(...)

I parse an xsl file, read the node <xsl:include href=".."> and set the value
of href =varFileName. I found this usage to be quite convinient, but I can't
seem to find the equivelant in  xalan while working with JAva Servlets.