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
public DesignElement getVirtualParent( )
	{
		if ( !isVirtualElement( ) )
			return null;
		
		DesignElement parent = null;
		DesignElement cur = this;
		while ( cur.getContainer( ) != null )
		{
			DesignElement container = cur.getContainer( );
			if ( container.getExtendsElement( ) != null )
			{
				parent = container.getExtendsElement( );
				break;
			}
			cur = cur.getContainer( );
		}
		
		if ( parent == null )
			return null;
		assert parent.getContainer( ) instanceof Module;
		return parent.getRoot( ).getElementByID( baseId );
	}
	/**
	 * Gets a property value given its internal name. This version does the full
	 * property search as defined by the given derived component. That is, it
	 * gets the "effective" property value. The name can be a built-in property
	 * name or a user-defined property name. However, if the name is not valid,
	 * the method will simply return a null property value.
	 * <p>