Can anyone tell me, what's the real difference between group and role? Ive been trying to figure this out for some time now and the more information I read, the more I get the sence, that this is brought up just to confuse people and there is no proper difference in this. Both can do the other one's job. Ive always used a group to manage users and their access rights.

Recently, I've come accross an administration software, where is a bunch of users. Each user can have assigned a module (whole system is split into a few parts called modules ie. Administration module, Survey module, Orders module, Customer module). On top of it, each module have a list of functionalities, that can be allowed or denied for each user. So let's say, a user John Smith can access module Orders and can edit any order, but havent given a right to delete any of them.

If there was more users with the same competency, I would use a group to manage that. I would aggregate such users into the same group and assign access rights to modules and their functions to the group. All users in the same group would have the same access rights.

Why call it a group and not role? I don't know, I just feel it that way. It seems to me, that simply it just doesnt really matter :] But I still would like to know the real difference.

What about you guys? Any suggestions why this should be rather called role than group or the other way round?

Thanks to everyone.