Avoiding problems with Date format in MySQL

If you construct a string with which to populate a date column and that string does not match the expected format, you will receive error.
In this case MySQL has function str_to_date which specifies string format

mysql> update ... set birth_data = str_to_date('FEB-12-1990', '%b-%d-%Y') where ...

Formatters:

• %a – the short weekday name: Sun, Mon,…
• %b – the short month name: Jan, Feb,…
• %c – the numeric month (0..12)
• %d – the numeric day of the month (00..31)
• %f – the number of microseconds (000000..999999)
• %H – the hour of the day, in 24-hour format (00..23)
• %h – the hour of the day, in 12-hour format (01..12)
• %i – the minutes within the hour (00..59)
• %j – the day of the year (001..366)
• %M – the full month name (January..December)
• %m – the numeric month
• %p – AM or PM
• %s – the number of seconds (00..59)
• %W – the full weekday name (Sunday..Saturday)
• %w – the numeric day of the week (0=Sunday..6=Saturday)
• %Y – the four-digit year