Expose empty annotations as SparseAnnotations to move down cast

Change-Id: I9e8a7d61b770faaec1b7e0ea1cf78bdb367b68ee
diff --git a/web/api/src/main/java/org/onosproject/rest/resources/ConfigProvider.java b/web/api/src/main/java/org/onosproject/rest/resources/ConfigProvider.java
index bfc1de7..55a14f3 100644
--- a/web/api/src/main/java/org/onosproject/rest/resources/ConfigProvider.java
+++ b/web/api/src/main/java/org/onosproject/rest/resources/ConfigProvider.java
@@ -465,7 +465,7 @@
     // Produces set of annotations from the given JSON node.
     private SparseAnnotations annotations(JsonNode node) {
         if (node == null) {
-            return (SparseAnnotations) DefaultAnnotations.EMPTY;
+            return DefaultAnnotations.EMPTY;
         }
 
         DefaultAnnotations.Builder builder = DefaultAnnotations.builder();