Dataflow Engine in DAQ Backbone DABC

New experiments at FAIR require new concepts of data acquisition systems. So rather than building hardware trigger configurations with strict latency limitations, self-triggered electronic systems will be utilized. Their front-end components will be time synchronized and will provide data furnished with time stamps. Data streams from a multitude of such components will be forwarded via a powerful sorting network to an event building farm. The Data Acquisition Backbone Core (DABC) is designed as a general purpose software framework for the implementation of such data acquisition systems. It is written in C++. Recently, we made its first version available. In this paper we describe the mechanisms of the data flow engine of DABC.