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/metadata/ElementDefn.java
* description of user-visible elements.
	 * 
	 * @return True if this is an invisible abstract element, false if this is a
	 *         concrete, user-visible element.
	 */
	public boolean isAbstract( )
	{
		return abstractElement;
	}
	/**
	 * Gets the predefined style for this element.
	 * 
	 * @return The predefined style .
	 */
	public String getSelector( )
	{
		return selector;
	}
	/**
	 * Gets the parent element. This is the element that this element extends.
	 * 
	 * @return Returns the parent element.
	 */
	public IElementDefn getParent( )
	{
		return parent;
	}
	/**
	 * Adds the name of a style property that should be made visible to this
	 * element type. Must be done while creating the element type.