When I look at the definition of a String type in the FIX protocol (e.g. here or here), I don't see a minimum length specified. Is it allowed to use empty strings? One online decoder seems to accept an empty string value (see tag 320), an other complains that it's invalid.
The FIX 4.4 specification states the following (emphasis in the original text):
Each message is constructed of a stream of
<tag>=<value>fields with a field delimiter between fields in the stream. Tags are of data type TagNum. All tags must have a value specified. Optional fields without values should simply not be specified in the FIX message. A Reject message is the appropriate response to a tag with no value.
That strongly suggests (but does not unambiguously state) to me that the use of an empty value for a string is invalid. It is unsurprising to me that different FIX implementations might treat this edge case in different ways. So, I think the best approach is to avoid using empty values for strings.