Chapter 12. Objects and Collections

Beginning with Version 8.0, Oracle has been adding object-oriented features to what had been a purely relational database server. Object types and collections were introduced in Oracle8, and both have been sufficiently refined in Oracle8i, Oracle9i Database, and Oracle Database 10g so that they may now be considered fully-functional.^[1] Oracle now considers its database engine to be object-relational, in that a database may mix relational constructs such as tables and constraints with object-oriented constructs such as object types, collections, and references.

^[1] For example, in release 8.0, object types didn't support inheritance, and collections could not be nested (i.e., an array of arrays), resulting in a fairly cool reception to Oracle's early attempts at object orientation.