As I understand it, and I'm not a database guy, PL/SQL is used almost excusively for embedding functions within the database. What do they call it? Embedded Procedures?

Anyway, recent versions of Oracle have also allowed Java to do the exact same thing, and some reports claim that they're promoting Java in favor of PL/SQL. But there's a lot of PL/SQL out there, and I doubt that it'll go away very soon.

I'm not really familiar with the language, but stuff I've read claims that its ``language syntax, structure and data types are similar to that of ADA. The PL/SQL language includes object oriented programming techniques such as encapsulation, function overloading, information hiding (all but inheritance). PL/SQL is commonly used to write data-centric programs to manipulate data in an Oracle database.''