indeed, here we check and just leave any property null if its not set in the database (btw, this is probably wrong in the case of refersh) https://github.com/doctrine/phpcr-odm/blob/master/lib/Doctrine/ODM/PHPCR/UnitOfWork.php#L301

@lsmith77 what do you think, should we check nullable here and if the field is nullable make sure it is null / empty array and otherwise throw an exception, like we do for translated fields?