Bug 149251 Inconsistent Handling of a Non-inheritable ROM Property
For a ROM property defined to be non-inheritable, an empty string property value should be consistently handled as an empty string, not as null. For example, an oda.dataSource extension defines a data source property with canInherit=false. When a oda-data-source handle get saved in a report design, it correctly includes the tag for such property, even when an empty string value is specified. <oda-data-source extensionID="my.oda.plugin" name="my Data Source" id="24"> ... <property name="ApplicationServer"></property> </oda-data-source> However, later when using the DE API to read its property value, a null is returned. Then when the report design is subsequently saved, the property tag is lost. Expects that an empty string value of a non-inhertiable property should be preserved.
model/org.eclipse.birt.report.model/src/org/eclipse/birt/report/model/core/DesignElement.java
*            The internal name of the user-defined property.
	 * @return The property definition, if found, null otherwise.
	 */
	public UserPropertyDefn getUserPropertyDefn( String propName )
	{
		DesignElement e = this;
		while ( e != null )
		{
			UserPropertyDefn p = e.getLocalUserPropertyDefn( propName );
			if ( p != null )
				return p;
			e = e.getExtendsElement( );
		}
		return null;
	}
	/**
	 * Gets the cached parent element. There will be no parent if either 1) the
	 * element does not extend from another user-defined element, or 2) the
	 * extends element is undefined.
	 * <p>
	 * Part of: Inheritance system.
	 * 
	 * @return parent element
	 */
	public DesignElement getExtendsElement( )
	{
		if ( extendsRef == null )
			return null;
		if ( !extendsRef.isResolved( ) )
			resolveExtends( getRoot( ) );