SharePoint 2007 - Web Part property behavior
While developing and testing web parts, I tend to create public properties I don't need and vice-versa, I tend to not create public properties that I do need. I have noticed some interesting behavior.
Let's say I include a public property called "Color". While testing the web part, I populate this property with "Red". As time goes by I decide that I don't need this property for some reason or other. At this point I may have tested the web part on multiple sites. Since I have decided that I no longer need the property I went ahead and deleted it from the web part assembly. I then continue to test. A little while later I said to myself, "Self, you forgot to delete the property values in the property (Color) you deleted a while ago. Way to go, you now have orphaned data somewhere in your content database and have no way to find it, shame on you!"
I looked at my monitor for a few minutes and thought what if I recreated the property with the same name? Would the data still be there? I went ahead and did that and lo and behold, my property appeared and all of the data I had previously saved to this property was still there.
I'm sure this is a "Feature".
Do you think this is good or bad behavior and why?