Geoff Worboys wrote:

>It is yet another one of those; "Do we want compliance or
>backwards compatibility?" questions.
>
>
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How about a third possibility -- something useful.

People have multiple roles. And in different contexts, they have
different roles. And then there's the idea that the middle tier of an
application may be serving may clients, each of whom has different role,
rights, and privileges.

Real applications must connect to a database in order the authenticate a
client. There are privileges that belong to the application, and
different privileges that belong to the client. An application should
be able to control database access based on what it knows of the
client. This requires multiple roles and the ability to
activate/deactivate specific roles.