: Please Use yyyy-MM-dd date format !!!
That is no way related to an Oracle error.
I have a date field in a table that contains date in dd-MMM-yy format .
No, you are confused. Oracle does not store dates in the format you see. It stores it internally in 7 bytes with each byte storing different components of the datetime value.
Byte Description
---- -------------------------------------------------
1 Century value but before storing it add 100 to it
2 Year and 100 is added to it before storing
3 Month
4 Day of the month
5 Hours but add 1 before storing it
6 Minutes but add 1 before storing it
7 Seconds but add 1 before storing it
If you want to display, use TO_CHAR with proper FORMAT MODEL.
While inserting, use TO_DATE with proper FORMAT MODEL.
What you see as a format by default, is your locale specific NLS settings.
SQL> select parameter, value from v$nls_parameters where parameter='NLS_DATE_FORMAT';
PARAMETER VALUE
--------------- ----------------------------------------------------------------
NLS_DATE_FORMAT DD-MON-RR
SQL> select sysdate from dual;
SYSDATE
---------
03-FEB-15
SQL> select to_char(sysdate, 'mm/dd/yyyy hh24:mi:ss') from dual;
TO_CHAR(SYSDATE,'MM
-------------------
02/03/2015 17:59:42
SQL>
Update Regarding MMM format.
By MMM if you mean the month name up to three characters, then use MON.