Assigning Roles to Users
Users are authenticated against the security database configured for the database being accessed. Roles are the mechanism by which authorization information is derived. You assign roles to a user. The roles provide the user with a set of privileges and permissions that grant the authority to perform actions against code and documents. At any given time, a user possesses a set of privileges and default permissions that is the sum of the privileges and default permissions inherited from all of the roles currently assigned to that user.
Use the Admin Interface to display the set of privileges and default permissions for a given user; do not try and calculate it yourself as it can easily get fairly complex when a system has many roles. To display a user’s security settings, use Admin Interface > Security > User > Describe. You need to select a specific user to see the Describe tab.
For more details on users, see Authenticating Users.