There are lots of ways to do it -- I myself prefer the TO_DATE/TO_CHAR method. I get all dates from the database in a STRING and I send them as a STRING. The date format I use on the way IN and OUT is:

'yyyy/mm/dd hh24:mi:ss'

The functions I generally use are:


static public java.util.Date strToDate(String s)
{
java.util.Date d = null;

if (s != null && s.length() == 19 )
{
d = new java.util.Date(
Integer.parseInt(s.substring(0,4)) - 1900,
Integer.parseInt(s.substring(5,7)) - 1,
Integer.parseInt(s.substring(8,10)),
Integer.parseInt(s.substring(11,13)),
Integer.parseInt(s.substring(14,16)),
Integer.parseInt(s.substring(17,19)));
}
return d;
}

static public String dateStr( java.util.Date x )
{
if ( x != null )
return (x.getYear()+1900) + "/" +
(x.getMonth()+1) + "/" +
x.getDate() + " " +
x.getHours() + ":" +
x.getMinutes() + ":" +
x.getSeconds();
else
return null;
}



You can also simply:

ResultSet rset = stmt.executeQuery("select DATECOL from TABLE");

while rset.next()
{
//get the date data
java.sql.Date date = rset.getDate(1);
....