10.5.3. Alternate Resource Pools

Certain activities allow alternative resources, when no standard resources are available. For instance, in a pizza service company, when no order taker is available, and a new order call comes in, an available pizza baker can take the order. Or in a hospital, where nurses guide patients to an examination room, when no nurse is available, a receptionist can guide a patient to an examination room.

The general conceptual pattern is that for certain types of activities A (like GuideToRoom), a resource role r (like guide) may be played not only by instances of its direct resource type R (like Guide), but also by instances of an alternative resource type R' (like ExaminationAssistant) or an organizational position P (like Nurse), if they are a subtypes of R (Guide).

When the resource type R is not abstract, then its instances are the preferred resources of activities of type A, and its (possibly preference-rank-annotated) «ar» subtypes specify types of alternative resources.

By default, for any non-abstract resource type R and for any organizational position P assigned as the range of a resource role r, an OE simulator can create a resource pool with the same (yet pluralized) name, pooling objects instantiating R or P, and assign it to r as the preferred resource pool.