1. A method, executed by a processor, of displaying a data flow, said method comprising: receiving a description of a data flow application to be displayed, the data flow application including nodes and edges connecting the nodes, the nodes representing operators and the edges representing data connections for data flowing between the operators; determining at least one of a reason that a user is to view the data flow application and a user constraint on a complexity of the data flow application to be displayed with the processor; creating a transformed representation of the data flow application based upon at least one of the user reason and the user constraint, wherein said creating of the transformed representation of the data flow application is further based on a set of rules that map at least one of the user reason and the user constraint to suitable transformations of the data flow application, and wherein said creating of the transformed representation of the data flow application progressively reduces the complexity of the data flow application to be displayed until objectives are satisfied, wherein the objectives are based upon at least one of the user reason and the user constraint; and displaying the transformed representation.