Owned property returned as null when all of its properties are null

[ErroneousFatality]

Inside my entity Submission:

public class Submission
{
   public string Id { get; private set; }
   ...
   public ObjectData ObjectData {get; private set;}
   ...
}

I have an owned entity of type ObjectData:

public class ObjectData
{
    // Properties
    public byte? CategoryType { get; private set; }
    public decimal? Cost { get; private set; }

    // Constructors
    public ObjectData(
        byte? objectCategoryType,
        decimal? objectCost
    )
    {
        CategoryType = objectCategoryType;
        Cost = objectCost;
    }

    private ObjectData() { }
}

Their relationship is configured inside the Context.OnModelCreating like so:

modelBuilder.Entity<Submission>().OwnsOne<ObjectData>(e => e.ObjectData);

When a Submission = { ObjectData = { ObjectCategoryType = null, ObjectCost = null } } is persisted, and then later fetched from the database, it will return as a Submission = { ObjectData = null }.

I expected it to return as Submission = { ObjectData = { ObjectCategoryType = null, ObjectCost = null } }.

It seems that EFCore determines if the owned entity is null by checking if all of its columns have null values, instead of differentiating between an "empty" owned property and a null owned property.

I need the ObjectData to always exist and all of its properties to be nullable. Any ideas on how to remedy this?

Further technical details

EF Core version: 3.1.3
Database provider: Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.SqlServer v3.1.3
Target framework: .NET Framework 4.8 / .NET Framework 3.1

[smitpatel]

By design, see #9005 (comment)

[ErroneousFatality]

@smitpatel Your answer does not help me solve my issue.
What would be the designed EFCore solution for my usecase?

[smitpatel]

If you need to always create the owned referenced regardless of property values, hence making the dependent required see #12100

[ErroneousFatality]

For anyone coming here with a similiar problem, I made a simple workaround, until #12100 feature is released.
I added a dummy bool property to the owned entity class, which I always set to a non-null value. That way, my owned entity never has all null values, and is thus never returned as null from the DB.

[sergey-gindin]

I had same problem in my project. I just have defined default value in my private constructor. It was suitable for me.