private void checkFamily(final byte[] family) throws NoSuchColumnFamilyException {
    if (!this.htableDescriptor.hasColumnFamily(family)) {
      throw new NoSuchColumnFamilyException("Column family " + Bytes.toString(family)
        + " does not exist in region " + this + " in table " + this.htableDescriptor);
    }
  }
@param delta If we are doing delta changes -- e.g. increment/append -- then this flag will be
             set; when set we will run operations that make sense in the increment/append
             scenario but that do not make sense otherwise.
hbase-server/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/hbase/regionserver/HRegion.java