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To format dates retrieved from a MySQL database in Java, you can follow these steps:

1. Retrieve the date/time value from the database using a JDBC ResultSet object.

2. Create a java.sql.Date or java.util.Date object from the retrieved value. You can use the ResultSet.getDate() or ResultSet.getTimestamp() method for this.

3. Use a SimpleDateFormat object to format the date as per your requirement. For example, if you want to format the date in "dd/MM/yyyy" format, you can create a SimpleDateFormat object with the pattern "dd/MM/yyyy" and use its format() method to get the formatted date as a String.

Here's an example code snippet that demonstrates this:

import java.sql.*;
import java.text.SimpleDateFormat;

public class DateFormatter {
   public static void main(String[] args) {
      try {
         // Setup JDBC connection to MySQL database
         Connection conn = DriverManager.getConnection(
            "jdbc:mysql://localhost/testdb", "username", "password");

         // Execute SQL query to retrieve date value from database
         Statement stmt = conn.createStatement();
         ResultSet rs = stmt.executeQuery("SELECT my_date_column FROM my_table");
         rs.next();
         java.sql.Date sqlDate = rs.getDate(1);

         // Convert java.sql.Date to java.util.Date
         java.util.Date utilDate = new java.util.Date(sqlDate.getTime());

         // Format the date using SimpleDateFormat
         SimpleDateFormat formatter = new SimpleDateFormat("dd/MM/yyyy");
         String formattedDate = formatter.format(utilDate);

         // Print the formatted date
         System.out.println("Formatted Date: " + formattedDate);

         // Close JDBC resources
         rs.close();
         stmt.close();
         conn.close();
      } catch (Exception e) {
         System.err.println("Error: " + e.getMessage());
      }
   }
}

Note that you need to replace "mydatecolumn" and "my_table" with the actual column name and table name from your database. Also, replace "testdb", "username" and "password" with the appropriate values for your own database configuration.