Hi Debra;
Yes, the PB Catalogue tables are still the same in PB 2017 Rx releases as they were in previous SAP, Sybase and even PowerSoft PB versions. They can be allocated in two ways ... 1) When the DB Painter first connects to your DBMS & DB instance or 2) By running the provided PBCat DML script in your favourite DBMS tool.
The SQL scripts were always included in the PB installs under a sub-folder named "Server". However, Sybase and SAP only provided the ASE and SS versions of those scripts as far as I can remember. PB2017Rx installs also include the "Server" sub-folder. Since no specific Oracle script is provided, the first alternative would be to have your Oracle DBA login to the Oracle DB first via the PB IDE with their credentials. That will allow the PB IDE to create the PBCat tables properly. Then every other developer that connects to the same Oracle DB will not need "Create" table privileges.
It is also possible to tweak the ASE / SS DML scripts provided in the "System" sub-folder to be PL/SQL compliant (vs T-SQL). I am sure that your Oracle DBA can easily do that. Then run the CREATE statements for the PBCAT tables via yor favourite Oracle DBA tool. After that, connecting to the new Oracle DB for your developers should be transparent with their Oracle ID.
Yes, the PBCAT tables are treated as SYSTEM tables and are used to hold the "Extended Attributes" that you would attached to Tables & Columns via the DB Painter. These extensions of course are used automatically when building DataWindow objects and provide developer productivity and consistency in your DW generation.
HTH
Regards ... Chris