@Override
  public List<TCell> append(TAppend tappend) throws IOError, TException {
    if (tappend.getRow().length == 0 || tappend.getTable().length == 0) {
      throw new TException("Must supply a table and a row key; can't append");
    }

    Table table = null;
    try {
      table = getTable(tappend.getTable());
      Append append = ThriftUtilities.appendFromThrift(tappend);
      Result result = table.append(append);
      return ThriftUtilities.cellFromHBase(result.rawCells());
    } catch (IOException e) {
      LOG.warn(e.getMessage(), e);
      throw getIOError(e);
    } finally {
      closeTable(table);
    }
  }
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