What should you be storing with an ASP.NET Profile Provider?

Question

What is the role of the Profile Provider in ASP.NET / MVC?

What kind of information should be stored/retrieved using this functionality? How does it fit in with the rest of the family of user providers:

• Profile Provider
• Membership Provider
• Role Provider
  ?

Answer 1

It's simply a way to store user information. A couple of examples I've used it for

1. Storing a company or client id that the user is associated with.
2. Storing user settings (color, fonts, pages) specific for my application

Another advantage is the profile provider does not require authentication so you can use it even if you are not using the Membership provider

Answer 2

How about using the Profile Provider to store a serialized copy of something like a users shopping cart? Is the Profile Provider not suitable to store this kind of data?