I used to do Oracle development and could choose between PLSQL and the java alternative.
I chose PLSQL because java offerred no clear advantage, and it wasn't really java. You
could use String, but for performance Oracle recommended some proprietary string class.
If I'm remembering correctly, you had to use JDBC from your java code (running inside Oracle!)
to access the database. I didn't see the point of writing very simple procedural code in
a language clearly not suited to the task. The hard parts of my problem didn't magically
disappear because I could write i++ instead of i = i + 1.
This was over 4 years ago, and Oracle/java integration may have improved, but slight
improvements in this area really don't change the equation much.
Jack Orenstein