How to convert text to date with given date format?

Hi

I'm having a text column CHAR(8) which contains dates in form of yyyyMMdd, e.g. "20140124". For date-based calculations I'd like to create a view with this text date converted to DATE datatype.

The "Date" function is supposed to do text-to-date conversion but I can't find a way to provide the specific format ("yyyyMMdd"); instead it's always using the database's default date format.

Any idea?

Thanks. Jens