Java Programming

Hi All,
I am getting an unparseable date error. The database returns date of format "1999-05-03". I would like to format the date to yyyyMMdd format. My code is as follows

Date effectiveDt = new Date();
String dateFormat = "yyyyMMdd";
DateFormat format = new SimpleDateFormat(dateFormat);
		format.setLenient(false);
effectiveDt = (Date)format.parse(rs.getDate("ear_date_fr").toString());

I tried another way by converting the date returned by the databse to SQL date and it still gives problem...

effectiveDt = (Date)format.parse(formUtil.returnSqlDate(rs.getDate("ear_date_fr").toString()).toString());

formUtil.returnSqlDate code is actually as follows:

public static java.sql.Date returnSqlDate(String formDate) {
	java.util.Date utilDt = null;

	SimpleDateFormat df1 = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyyMMdd");

	try {
		utilDt = df1.parse(formDate);
	} 
	catch (ParseException pxp) {
		return null;
	}

	return new java.sql.Date(utilDt.getDate());
}

any help appreciated..

hepzi leon soon