[Zope-dev] Re: User Groups

[Casey Duncan]

On Sunday 16 December 2001 09:21 am, Chris Withers allegedly wrote:
> Kyler@Lairds.com wrote:
> > On Tue, 11 Dec 2001 13:43:45 -0500 (EST):
> > >I've found that it would be very useful to be able to define groups of
> > >users and then grant a local role to that group rather than individual
> > >users.
> >
> > A role is essentially a group.
>
> I think the general consensus is that a role is not essentially a group
> although the two can be easily confused ;-)
>
> cheers,
>
> Chris

I think that the key difference is that:

  - A role is a collection of permissions.

  - A group is a collection of users and possibly other groups.

That said, many systems allow you to assign permissions to groups and 
directly to users, something Zope currently does not support.

Something like groups makes it simpler to affect whole lumps of users all at 
once. Roles can also be used to acheive a similar goal, but since they are 
more about bundling permissions than users, and they are often location 
specifc, they are less than ideal for this purpose.

/---------------------------------------------------\
  Casey Duncan, Sr. Web Developer
  National Legal Aid and Defender Association
  c.duncan@nlada.org
\---------------------------------------------------/