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>There are a lot of parameters you can set (NLS_...)
>For the date format, there is the NLS_DATE_FORMAT you can set to MM/DD/YYYY (or use the NLS_TERRITORY) in the Oracle initialization parameters file (both on client or server side. You also have to take care of the width set by default to 8 car).

The only problem with this approach is that setting NLS_... parameters on the client side means fiddling with Windows registry settings.