About Procedural Language/SQL (PL/SQL)

Procedural Language/SQL (PL/SQL) (pronounced P L sequel) is a native Oracle Database extension to SQL. It bridges the gap between declarative and imperative program control by adding procedural elements, such as conditional control and loops.

In PL/SQL, you can declare constants and variables, procedures and functions, types and variables of those types, and triggers. You can handle exceptions (run-time errors). You can create PL/SQL units—procedures, functions, packages, types, and triggers—that are stored in the database for reuse by applications that use any of the Oracle Database programmatic interfaces.

The basic unit of a PL/SQL source program is the block, which groups related declarations and statements. A block has an optional declarative part, a required executable part, and an optional exception-handling part.