There are extensions to several IDEs for JavaScript editing. These IDEs can be used to edit DataFlow scripts with syntax highlighting and other IDE niceties. If your JavaScript IDE supports SDOCML, you can import the DataFlow SDOCML file into your IDE environment. Doing so can enable code completion of DataFlow capabilities within JavaScript.

DataFlow provides an IDE plugin for Eclipse that also allows launching of DataFlow scripts within Eclipse. Instructions for installing and configuring the DataFlow IDE plugin for Eclipse can be found in a later section. After being installed, the plugin provides the ability to launch DataFlow scripts using Eclipse launch configurations. This is extremely useful for developing and debugging DataFlow scripts.

When a DataFlow script is launched, a graphical view of the DataFlow application is displayed. This graphical view provides a quick view of the DataFlow application composed by your JavaScript. This view is a good debugging tool to ensure the application you built is what you intended. Other debugging and profiling views are also included.

DataFlow scripts can also be executed using the DataFlow execution script dr. The dr command can be found in the bin/ directory of the DataFlow installation. To execute a DataFlow script, use the dr command, passing the name of the script to execute as a command line parameter. The script sets up the environment for executing DataFlow and invokes the JVM found in the JAVA_HOME environment variable (or in the execution path if JAVA_HOME is not set). See Command Line Usage: dr for more information about using the dr command.