Data flow based software architecture has been in use in the ATE environment for the last decade. Major ATE vendors typically provide the test engineers a database approach for representing test data and a programming language with tester specific extensions for implementing test methods. The data base implementation and tester extensions were based on custom syntax making the whole test program development environment coupled tightly with the closed ATE hardware architecture. This paper describes the implementation of test data using XML, a license-free, platform-independent and well-supported language, and implementation of test methods using Java, an open and platform independent interpretive language in a next generation architecture ATE platform. The advantages of this environment in extensibility, productivity and reliability for the ATE user are presented.