Concept of Roles and Profiles in SFDC

Roles and Profiles are the two pillars in SFDC on which the entire access hierarchy is based.

For a user in SFDC It is mandatory to have a profile but not a role.

Profile is used for multiple things in SFDC and some of the key one's are:

• To analyze the type of SFDC license used by the user.
• To give the access to an object. If the object level permission is missing in the profile then the user will not be able to see the records of that object in salesforce.com.
• To give access to Tabs, fields via FLS, General and Administrator settings.

A role is used to maintain the role hierarchy. Role hierarchy allows the mangers to see the data of the user reporting to them.

Remember:- Role hierarchy is a tool given to developer to meet the data roll up requirements. It need not be the organization role hierarchy.

Role hierarchy can be enabled or disabled for the custom objects. This will decide that data of managers will be seen by CEO or not.

In nutshell profile give access to Object where as role give access to the Records Standartd SFDC Certification Question