Fw: Formatting dates (from MySQL)

Hey there, I was just looking at the date/time functions (http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.time.php) and I can't seem to find a function that can format a date that is supplied in the format of a DATETIME column. So, I was wondering, is there a function that can format it properly or should I let the database handle the formatting (I'm really new to SQL, I didn't come across anything to mod in the select statement yet). I could ofcourse split it on space for a time and a date var and then split the date on -'s for years, months and days but efficient is something else I think :-) In the archives I saw some examples doing exactly that, but nothing with a single function (unless home defined ofcourse). Kind regards and TIA