dev.rafael wrote:???????

Roles e grupos são a mesma coisa. Grupos são dados associados ao Principal e Roles é como o JEE trata. Não tem diferença!!!

What Is a Group?
A group is a set of authenticated users, classified by common traits, defined in the Application Server.

A Java EE user of the file realm can belong to an Application Server group. (A user in the certificate realm cannot.) An Application Server group is a category of users classified by common traits, such as job title or customer profile. For example, most customers of an e-commerce application might belong to the CUSTOMER group, but the big spenders would belong to the PREFERRED group. Categorizing users into groups makes it easier to control the access of large numbers of users.

An Application Server group has a different scope from a role. An Application Server group is designated for the entire Application Server, whereas a role is associated only with a specific application in the Application Server.

What Is a Role?
A role is an abstract name for the permission to access a particular set of resources in an application. A role can be compared to a key that can open a lock. Many people might have a copy of the key. The lock doesn?t care who you are, only that you have the right key.

Some Other Terminology
The following terminology is also used to describe the security requirements of the Java EE platform:

Principal: A principal is an entity that can be authenticated by an authentication protocol in a security service that is deployed in an enterprise. A principal is identified using a principal name and authenticated using authentication data.

Security policy domain (also known as security domain or realm): A security policy domain is a scope over which a common security policy is defined and enforced by the security administrator of the security service.

Security attributes: A set of security attributes is associated with every principal. The security attributes have many uses, for example, access to protected resources and auditing of users. Security attributes can be associated with a principal by an authentication protocol.

Credential: A credential contains or references information (security attributes) used to authenticate a principal for Java EE product services. A principal acquires a credential upon authentication, or from another principal that allows its credential to be used.