converting date type in SQL

[clarkson]

I have a table called employee in which there's a field called birth_date. Iwant to get the output in the format of Jan-01-2013.My sql is

$sql="SELECT emp_name,emp_address,salary,DATE_FORMAT(birth_date,'%b,%d,%Y') AS birth_date FROM employee";$query=mysql_query($sql,$connect);

But the query is not succesful. What have I done wrong?Any help to correct this please

[jaseervp@ymail.com]

select to_char(birth_date,'DD-Mon-YYYY') from employee;

-- oracle syntax

[justsomeguy]

Check for errors with the query if it isn't returning any data. Is birth_date an actual date/time field, or something else like varchar?