x int default s.nextval primary keyHow cool is that? No longer will you need to create a trigger to fill the column with the nextvalue from a sequence, you just declare it this way and you're done. Maybe it's just syntactic sugar, I don't know (yet) and frankly I don't care. I like the fact that this feature makes it more declarative to populate the primary key (or any other column of course). I'm happy.
In the current version of the Oracle database you needed a Nested Table or Varray Type defined at schema level in order to be able to use it in the TABLE operator. This is no longer necessary, it can be a PL/SQL declared type. The types that can be used as bind variables has been extended: Boolean, Nested Tables can be used as bindvariable in Dynamic SQL. Subquery Factoring (the With clause if you will) can hold private functions, the use case presented for this: pretty print an integer in K, M, G, T. Using userdefined PL/SQL functions in a SQL statement is not advisable, but if you really need to there is a new pragma: PRAGMA UDF. With this pragma the statement is almost as fast as pure SQL.
A new step has been taken to continue on "least privileges", meaning that the user only gets the privileges that are absolutely necessary. A Role can be granted to a PL/SQL unit.
The ability to inspecting the callstack has been improved by the introduction of a new package: UTL_CALL_STACK. The package contains numerous functions to help in this area, such as current_edition and lexical_depth. White listing of program units: restrict which program unit can be called by other program units.
For the custom theme that is used in the application that I'm working on, an Application Level Substitution string was created. You can define these substitution strings at the application level, available from the application home page.
