merging #1774 online sharding test

adding a (currently known failure) test to check that a table can continue to be accessed/write during sharding
merge for #2317 test protobuf connection

adds a new test that opens a protobuf connection to the server to confirm that connections open and basic queries execute. This uses the third party C++ driver.
Merge branch 'next' into sam_2156_env_stuff
Merge branch 'sam_2156_env_stuff' into sam_2156_env_ii