public Object getDefaultVal() {
      return defaultVal;
    }
Use this method if you need to set a system property and are going to instantiate the
configuration file via HiveConf.  This is because HiveConf only looks for values it knows,
so it will miss all of the metastore.* ones.  Do not use this to explicitly set or get the
underlying config value unless you are 100% sure you know what you're doing.
The reason for this is that MetastoreConf goes to a
lot of trouble to make sure it checks both Hive and Metastore values for config keys.  If
you call {@link Configuration#get(String)} you are undermining that.
@return hive.* configuration key
standalone-metastore/metastore-common/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/hive/metastore/conf/MetastoreConf.java