I'm working on a site a part of which involves personalized data, which
I'm sure has been done to death, just not by me!

anyway, as I  am going about designing this system, here is what I'm
wondering about.

database  < ------converted to xml pages ---> into xml cache directory
data

xml files <------ transformed to html ---> html to browser

What I am wondering about is this: when is the data from the database
converted to xml typically ? It seems to me an offline batch process is
probably the way to go.

* What about xslt to html ? when is this typcally done ?

I know I can do this all at runtime but its going to be dog slow, so
I'd like to know what your solutions have been.

* Is there anyway to get the databases itself to give me their data in
xml ?

* links to good web-sites for this kind of discussions. ?

Can you please recommend some books with real-life design solutions or
architectures. I've been reading about J2EE patterns, and I understand
them, but I learn best by examples.
Thankyou