Oracle WebLogic Server 11g Administration Handbook

Users, Groups, Roles, and Security Policies

A WebLogic Server user is any entity that needs to be authenticated, so this could include the administrators and other users, as well as clients such as a Java client. To authenticate to the server, you must provision the users with unique identities in a security realm. Although you can manage users individually, it's far easier to handle large numbers of users by assigning them to groups. A group is scoped to the entire domain. A security role grants an identity to a user, but unlike a group, a user can be scoped to a specific resource. A security policy specifies which user, group, or role can access a WebLogic resource based on conditions that you specify, such as the time of day (time constraints) ...