Portal roles and Authorization in NW2004s

Hi Gurus,

In earlier Portal implementation of ESS/MSS which was ITS based we used to maintain roles in EP by doing a role upload and maintaining authorizations in the backend R/3 system and if any new changes being made in the role is being distributed to the r/3 system using system administrator -> Permissions -> sap authorization and role distributions are sent to R/3. where we can go to W3PR transaction can create authorization profile for that role there.

Now my question is in ESS/MSS implementation based on Web dynpro how are portal roles and authorization maintained?

please do tell me as to how they are maintained in the NW2004s implementations.

Regards,

Ramesh