SQL Server® 2008 Administration: Instant Reference

7.2. Implement Roles

Roles are all about permissions—permissions that we don't want to assign specifically to users. With the ability to assign all needed permissions to the roles and simply associate users with roles, you can easily add and drop users from defined functionality through manipulations of role association. Server roles are nonconfigurable collections of server permissions. Configurable roles come in two flavors: database roles and application roles.

7.2.1. Manage Server Roles

You can associate server roles with server logins to grant specific server-level permissions to a login account. To access the server roles configuration, use these steps:

1. Expand the Security node in the target server in SSMS. Then expand the Logins node. ...