datetime

I am using a mssql database and I have a question regarding the datetime type. When I write a date to the database it store the date in the following format: 6/8/03 But when I extract the date from the database it returns the value in the following format: Jun 8 2003 12:00AM Is there a nice function available in php that will format the date based upon certain specification. I know that date() exists, but I that means I would have to use mktime() which would require parsing the entire string and breaking the string into the day, the month, the year. Furthermore, I would then need a switch statement to convert the value Jun into the value 6. I appreciate any help. Thanks, Dale