What is Bulk Collect?

In database contexts, particularly with Oracle, 'Bulk Collect' is a feature that allows you to retrieve multiple rows of data from a cursor or query result into a collection (like an array or list) in a single operation. This significantly reduces the number of context switches between the SQL and PL/SQL engines, resulting in improved performance when fetching large amounts of data. Instead of fetching one row at a time, a 'Bulk Collect' fetches a batch of rows, making it much more efficient for operations that require processing numerous records.