I am little late to the party but i am facing a similiar situation. We want to upgrade to the latest SDN. I am using the above example to explain our problem. We are accessing the decision property of the RelationshipValue class in our codebase several times. Now, when we upgrade this class property is removed because the new class only points towards the characteristic attribute.
Any idea how to solve that problem? Seems like i have to load the decision now when i need the relation?