Hi Craig,
>> What I am hoping someone can tell me is if RANGE can be used and what pitfalls I might experience.
In general - yes you can do that, but please keep in mind that the column BUKRS is VARCHAR2(12) and no numeric data type. This is a bad design flaw by SAP (in my opinion) not to use the correct data type for numeric values. So depending on your used BUKRS values you may can use wild cards or search pattern.
>> Or can I do the work on Oracle directly
Yes, you can do that. I have also done this several times for special partitioning schemes.
>> should that be required to use LIST partition type and if so how without losing any data?
You can use the DEFAULT partition attribute for LIST partitioning to map unknown list values to a default partition. So no data loss or better said no ORA error at all. Oracle documentation: Creating Partitions
Regards
Stefan