Are Upgrade Mechanisms a Thing of the Past?
One can argue that clients are becoming increasingly thin: just bare browsers. Given the massive popularity of web containers (such as Tomcat) and application servers (such as Geronimo), maybe the only place where upgrades will be relevant is at the server?
Do we really need to worry about client-side upgrades? My thinking is that there is a growing need for dynamic, event-driven client-side code such as that provided by Ajax. If this trend accelerates, then client code will fragment beyond the basic browser.
Once this happens, upgrades will figure on both the client and server sides.