Role Maintenance and role administration are terms which were used for the first time in SAP 4.6C. The role maintenance tool in SAP is transaction PFCG. It is the most basic tool to control and manage security in all SAP systems. The menu path to access the role maintenance tool in SAP is given below.

Tools > Administration > User Maintenance > Role Administration > Roles

The role maintenance and administration tool in SAP is mainly used by the security administrators. One of the biggest tricks which SAP can play is in the area of security and user access. For this reason it is important to ensure that roles created match the security policies of the company. The role maintenance tool which is transaction PFCG (profile generator) consists of menus, authorizations and users. Menus contain transaction codes, reports, web addresses, and folders. Authorizations contain authorization objects, authorization values and organizational values. Users includes organization plan, time delimited users and so on. All these three together comprise the role maintenance and administration tool in SAP.