%TYPE and %ROWTYPE in Oracle?

Both are Oracle key words, used to inherit the data types of, variables defined earlier in PL/SQL program, or from a column of table or view.

% TYPE acquire the data type of a variable or a database column.
Example :
declare
    Sal employee.salary%TYPE;

begin
    NULL;
end;
/

Here in the above example we have defined a variable sal which acquired data type from column salary of table employee.

% ROWTYPE acquire the record type that represents a entire row of a table or view or columns selected in the cursor. Below is the syntax for this :

rowtype_attribute := {cursor_name | cursor_variable_name | table_name}%ROWTYPE
Example :
declare
   rec_emp  employee%RowType;
begin


end;
/

Here in the above example we have created a record type just similar to the record of employee table.

Advantage :

The major advantage using this approach to define variables in PL/SQL programs is in case any modification in definition of a column in a table, the data type of a variable changes accordingly.