Needle vs Cucumber comparison of testing frameworks
What are the differences between Needle and Cucumber?

	Needle http://needle.spree.de/	Cucumber https://github.com/cucumber/cucumber-ruby
Programming language	Java	Ruby
Category	Unit Testing	Acceptance Testing
General info	Needle is a lightweight framework for testing Java EE components outside of the container in isolation Needle reduces the test setup code by analysing dependencies and has automatic injection of mock objects by default. Therefore It will maximize the speed of development as well as the execution of unit tests	An automation tool for Behavior-Driven Development The specifications are written in plain texts, which allows them to be easily understandable for all stakeholders. Cucumber Framework also supports languages beyond Ruby e.g. Java, JavaScript and Scala.
xUnit Set of frameworks originating from SUnit (Smalltalk's testing framework). They share similar structure and functionality.	No	No
Client-side Allows testing code execution on the client, such as a web browser	Yes You can test front-end components and functionality by testing individual front-end classes and functions	Yes You can test the front-end part like the GUI using cucumber and selenium, they integrate well to test your front-end.
Server-side Allows testing the bahovior of a server-side code	Yes You can test back-end components and functionality.one of needles features is database testing via a JPA (Java Persistence API) like hibernate	Yes You can test back-end components such as APIs using rest & soap clients, and databases using whatever client libraries were provided by the libraries that existed in those stacks
Fixtures Allows defining a fixed, specific states of data (fixtures) that are test-local. This ensures specific environment for a single test	Yes It has setUp() and tearDown() functions which are mostly used to execute database operations
Group fixtures Allows defining a fixed, specific states of data for a group of tests (group-fixtures). This ensures specific environment for a given group of tests.	Yes The setUp() and tearDown functions can be used to define an environment for a group of tests	Yes Using the cucumber extension aruba you can create fixures in two steps: 1.Create a fixtures-directory; 2.Create fixture files in this directory
Generators Supports data generators for tests. Data generators generate input data for test. The test is then run for each input data produced in this way.	N/A	Yes You can group your fixtures inside your fixtures directories
Licence Licence type governing the use and redistribution of the software	GNU Lesser General Public License v2.1	MIT License
Mocks Mocks are objects that simulate the behavior of real objects. Using mocks allows testing some part of the code in isolation (with other parts mocked when needed)	Yes One of needle's features is automatic injection of mock objects, it supports EasyMock and Mockito out of the box	Yes By using all of RSpec’s supported mocking frameworks (RSpec, Mocha, RR, Flexmock)
Grouping Allows organizing tests in groups	N/A	Yes Cucumber allows the use of tag Cucumber feature files or individual tests to group tests. Then, you can pass a Cucumber tagged expression at test execution that specifies the tag (grouped) tests to run. https://www.toolsqa.com/cucumber/cucumber-tags/
Other Other useful information about the testing framework