testing automation - help

[Sona Patel]

Hello all...

I have been asked to look for some automation tool or develop some automation tool which should be able to test the application. Our application needs varying input. Most of the test cases require change in property file or change in database. I am not sure if we can achieve this with some automation tool.

I have never been involved in testing automation so not aware of any tool. Kindly guide me in this. Looking at the requirement of automation, which tool can be used?
One more question - manual testing is widely used or automation?

Regards,
Sona

[Joachim Rohde]

There's a whole bunch of tools that you can use, have a look at http://java-source.net/open-source/testing-tools
If you never dealt with automatic testing before you should have a look at JUnit and/or TestNG. For database-testing there ist DbUnit.
To suggest other possible tools you need to give us a bit more details about your application (e.g., is it a web, desktop, mobile-application?)

[Sona Patel]

Hi Joachim,

Thanks for your input. This is java console application. Is it possible that - before providing input to console application, we can set different values in property file or change few data in database after each test case? what i think is - automation is not achievable fully, we have to relay on manual testing for many cases.

Looking forward for input from others also who have done or are doing testing automation for console applications.

Regards,
Sona