Porting to Hbase 0.98 cdh 5

We're moving to HBase 0.98 and would like to contribute these changes back. Specifically we're using CDH 5.2 (when it comes out), but here I've made the changes to use CDH 5.1 (same HBase version anyway, 0.98)

I suppose a different branch should be kept for 0.98 vs 0.94 compatibility.