Hi,
I am tryin to insert values entered by user into oracle db.I am using jsp and java beans for this.request.getParameter() works fine for string parameters but what should i use for fields such as date?..thx

Yes, request.getParameter() always returns a string unless you plan on challenging the API.

As far as date is concerned, you can decide on a format which you would be expecting from your users. At the server side, pull the date values entered by the user as a string, try to parse that using the SimpleDateFormat class. If an exception is thrown, the user entered an invalid or unacceptable date; if no exception, then you would get a java.util.Date object which can be then converted to a java.sql.Date object which can then be persisted to a database.