---
title: "CAT 3.2"
description: "CAT release notes 3.2"
url: "https://docs.justcat.it/release-notes/recent/3.2/"
---
# CAT 3.2


🐈‍⬛ 💘  🦆 Cats and ducks are friends now. We are happy to announce much wider support for DuckDB. Plus one feature users keep asking for, and a few fixes:

![CAT data sources showing DuckDB and test connection button](duckdb-and-test-connection.png)

## DuckDB

CAT now supports testing data in DuckDB databases. The new provider is called `DuckDB@1`.

DuckDB can read Parquet, JSON and CSV files, files in S3 or Azure storage, Delta and Iceberg tables. That means, you can automate tests for such data:

~~~sql
CREATE VIEW sales AS
SELECT * FROM read_parquet('s3://acme-exports/sales/date=*/part-*.parquet', hive_partitioning = true);
~~~

~~~yaml
Data sources:
- Name: Catalog
  Provider: DuckDB@1
  Connection string: DataSource=%DATA_DIR%\catalog.duckdb;access_mode=READ_ONLY

Tests:
- Name: Yesterday's sales arrived
  Data source: Catalog
  Query: SELECT 1 FROM sales WHERE date = today() - 1 LIMIT 1
  Expectation: set is not empty
~~~

By the way, `Excel@2` and `Csv@2` providers use DuckDB under the hood too, nothing changes for them.

More details are in [Test Parquet, JSON and other files with DuckDB](https://docs.justcat.it/how-to-guides/data-platforms/test-parquet-json-and-other-files-with-duckdb/ "Test Parquet, JSON and other files with DuckDB") and in the [DuckDB@1 reference](https://docs.justcat.it/reference/data-sources/providers/duckdb-1/ "DuckDB@1").

## Test Results in a DuckDB File

Test results could always be saved to a database table, e.g. in SQL Server, PostgreSQL or ORACLE. Now you can stream your test results into a DuckDB database:

~~~yaml
Data sources:
- Name: Results
  Provider: DuckDB@1
  Connection string: DataSource=%RESULTS_DIR%\cat-results.duckdb

Output:
- Database: Results
  Table: main.cat_test_result
~~~

See [full documentation](https://docs.justcat.it/reference/outputs/duckdb/ "Output to DuckDB").

## Test Connection

We added a possibility to test the connection to a data source without running any test.

**In CAT Studio, there is a new Test Connection button** in the data source dialog. It works with the values in the dialog, so you can check the connection before you click Apply. If it fails, you see the error message from the driver:

![Error message stating no access to AeroWDH](error-connection.png)

In the other tools you can test one data source or all data sources:

~~~powershell
# CAT CLI
catcli ping
catcli ping -d AeroDWH
# CAT PowerShell module
Test-CatDataSource
# CAT Python module
cat.ping_data_source("AeroDWH")
~~~

~~~
OK    AeroDWH  SqlServer@2  0.4 s  Connected and read one row
FAIL  Claims   Excel@2      0.0 s  File not found: /home/x/Aero/Claims.xlsx
~~~

In pipelines you can run `catcli ping` as the first step, it returns exit code `12` when some data source is not available. What exactly is checked for each provider is described in the [ping reference](https://docs.justcat.it/reference/cat-cli/ping/ "catcli ping").

## Fixes

We fixed a bug in CAT Studio: for some users, the list of recent projects was not showing.


-----------------------------------------

That's it :-). Happy testing!

CAT team