I don't think it is mandatory to use dd-MON-yy for the retrieve based on a Date field in the oracle database.
I use some thing like:
table1.ACTIVITY_DATE = to_date( ?, 'YYYYMMDD');
params.add(reportDate);
Here report date is similar to the date you are talking about. All I do is convert or save the value you get from jsp as a
string and invoke the sql as above. This way you don't need to go through headaches of converting to month name etc.
Always a novice,
Kishore.