title: How can I set the global default date format in Java?
body: <p>Is there a way to set the default DateFormat class used for parsing strings into dates?</p>
  
  <p>My background: I get exceptions reading date values from JDBC because the date string is not in the expected format.</p>
  
  <p><em>(text added on 2011-07-22):</em></p>
  
  <p>Seems I need to precise my question description: I use a foreign, proprietary database together with a proprietary JDBC driver. There is no possibility to know or even change the column type on database side. When I try to read the ResultSet columns via ResultSet.getDate() or ResultSet.getObject() some exception is triggered inside the JDBC driver like "10 Jul 1999 is not a valid date". What I want to achieve is to avoid this internal exception by setting some appropriate global default date format. Maybe I would need to implement some custom Locale first and the install that Locale globally?</p>