You tear off a property to gain access to the encapsulated features of a bean. This can be necessary when a property is in itself a bean and you want to connect to one of its features. The torn-off property is not actually a separate bean but a variable that represents the property itself or points to it.
For example, in an address book application you might tear off properties as follows:
Visual Composition Editor Overview
Visual Programming Fundamentals
How Classes and Beans Are Related
Visual, Nonvisual, and Composite Beans
Working with Beans Visually
Composing Beans Visually
Adding the IBM Java Examples project
Tearing Off Properties
Visual Composition Editor
The Menu Bar in Visual Composition
Properties
Pop-Up Menus for the Visual Composition Editor