The most significant component is the unit testing framework. From the Press Release:

Oracle SQL Developer Release 2.1 introduces a unit-testing framework that enables developers to build and share unit tests and test suites that can be run in batch mode and from command line against different databases. PL/SQL Unit Testing offers database developers powerful, prebuilt capabilities with which to develop and run regression tests for their database code resulting in higher quality database development while reducing the need for writing scripts for unit testing.

Unit Testing PL/SQL code has traditionally been poorly and incompletely done. It is difficult to do, there are a lot of issues to take into account and lots of boundary cases where frameworks just don’t or can’t help. Many have tried before (Wikipedia has a list) and had partial success. I have never heard of any serious project that has been able to use a particular framework for all test cases.

My experience of these tools is limited, having opted to ‘role my own’ in the past almost every time. It will be interesting to see if Oracle’s idea of unit testing pl/sql code will catch on and become the de-facto method. I’ll measure that by if/when I start seeing it on a significant number of Oracle specialists’ CVs.

My understanding is that this has been a work in progress for some time. What I don’t know is if it has been built on the foundations of one of the existing ‘solutions’ or if Oracle have built it from the ground up.