@Override
  public List<TRowResult> getRowsWithColumns(ByteBuffer tableName, List<ByteBuffer> rows,
    List<ByteBuffer> columns, Map<ByteBuffer, ByteBuffer> attributes) throws IOError {
    return getRowsWithColumnsTs(tableName, rows, columns, HConstants.LATEST_TIMESTAMP, attributes);
  }
Note: this internal interface is slightly different from public APIs in regard to handling of
the qualifier. Here we differ from the public Java API in that null != byte[0]. Rather, we
respect qual == null as a request for the entire column family. The caller (
{@link #getVerTs(ByteBuffer, ByteBuffer, ByteBuffer, long, int, Map)}) interface IS consistent
in that the column is parse like normal.
hbase-thrift/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/hbase/thrift/ThriftHBaseServiceHandler.java