Hello @AndyBe -
Let me begin with your last question. Everything that you’re asking about so far is available in KNIME Analytics Platform - a server license isn’t required.
You can find a bit of general information about database connections in our online documentation here: https://docs.knime.com/latest/database_extension_guide/index.html.
For connecting to Oracle specifically, you have a few options. You could use the Database Connector node as described here: oracle connection. You can also try out the Oracle Connector (Labs) node in the KNIME Database (Preview) extension. Both methods will require registering an Oracle JDBC driver.
For an example of how some in-database processing might work in KNIME, check out this example workflow: https://www.knime.com/nodeguide/data-access/databases/database-advanced-example.
For more on Hadoop and big data, you can start here: https://www.knime.com/knime-big-data-extensions. You may also want to give the Local Big Data Environment node a try.
Hope this helps!