Not aware of the direct connection, one workaround will be to connect using webservices datasource in BI pUblisher, with an integation platform, but this may not be a scalable solution for perofrmance and data volumes

Agree to this idea, very much needed especially since we do not have a database query tool available in Cloud. I agree it is not advisable when creating reports to fit within layout , but for the purpose of extracting data using BI, this will be very helpful

Very much needed. I have seen that there are tools available internally to Oracle that works like sqldeveloper. It would be great if that (or some version of that ) can be extended to customers also, as many a times, we need to do a lot of queries for problem analysis and data analysis.