fixed bug handling deprecated classes

Change-Id: I177ebd1f07cfe9152876dbb3ae4a941454f89797
bug fix for empty/sparse vector
added removeItems()

Change-Id: I18b4eb6fb0dc9c1105d48b798219f932b08763a9
switched to using removeItems()

Change-Id: Idf6e9a85cf469e92c2bfdde5232aceda401eed13