The name of a role should be based on your business's conversational name for the type of node it manages. So, if you generally call the machine a web server, you should prefer a name such as role::web, as opposed to naming it according to any underlying profile technology such as web::apache or web::nginx. This adds a layer of abstraction and hides the complexity of the profile code, again utilizing good programming practices.

Another advantage to this best practice is the benefit of communication within your organization: testers, project managers, and even business people can understand the simple language of roles, yet Puppet developers communicate more readily at the deeper profile level of abstraction.

Profiles expose an appropriate interface to roles. Roles, correspondingly, also expose a neat interface to your ENC, and this allows even fewer technical company personnel to be responsible for node classification.