Karl Nack <karlnack(at)futurityinc(dot)com> writes:
>> (The fact that there are two components is a historical aberration,
>> and I'd be the first to agree it's ugly, but that's how it works.)
> My understanding is that the first component indicates how dates are
> output by default, the second how dates are interpreted upon input
> (to disambiguate between MDY and DMY).
The second one affects field order for some of the output styles, too.
See
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.3/static/datatype-datetime.html#DATATYPE-DATETIME-OUTPUT
In particular, tables 8-14 and 8-15 illustrate all the output formatting
options you have. SQL, MDY might be the closest to what you want.
regards, tom lane