question: public static BigDecimal parseBigDecimalForEntity ( String bigDecimalString ) throws NumberFormatException { if ( bigDecimalString == null ) { return null ; } bigDecimalString = bigDecimalString . trim ( ) ; bigDecimalString = bigDecimalString . replaceAll ( "," , "" ) ; if ( bigDecimalString . length ( ) < 1 ) { return null ; } return new BigDecimal ( bigDecimalString ) ; }
target:  Return nulls for empty strings, as the entity engine can deal with nulls. This will provide blanks in fields where BigDecimal display. Blank meaning null, vs. 0 which means 0