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

Needle

http://needle.spree.de/

Robot Framework

https://robotframework.org/
Programming language

Java

Python

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

Robot is a Python framework used for acceptance/functional testing

Robot is an automated test framework which has a simple plain text syntax and can be extended easily with Python or Java libraries. It can run on the .net-based IronPython and on Jython which is Java based.
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

Robot has a rich library and can also be easily integrated with Selenium for browser automation to test front-end components
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

Robot can be used for back-end tests as well
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

There is no inbuilt way to work with fixtures in Robot however it can integrate with unittest and use fixtures that way
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

By integrating with unittest
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

Robot has a library called the Robot Framework Faker library. It contains 147 keywords used for generating random test data
Licence
Licence type governing the use and redistribution of the software

GNU Lesser General Public License v2.1

Apache License 2.0

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

Robot can access Python's mock library for mocking
Grouping
Allows organizing tests in groups

N/A

Yes

One can create a test suite with Robot
Other
Other useful information about the testing framework