Recently, while trying to mash Team Foundation Server and SQL Server Reporting Services, I needed to convert a DateTime in SQL to a short date string. This is how I did it.

CONVERT(VARCHAR, ClosedDate, 101)

That's it. The definition for doing so is as follows:

CONVERT ( data_type [ ( length ) ] , expression [ , style ] )

MSDN has quite an article describing CONVERT in depth.