I agree !
As of now we have installed SEP MR4 for about 50 servers(20 days ago, not been rebooted) they will be rebooted during the patch window, we have installed just AV and AS, till date i have not faced any issues with the AV functionality, all are reporting, scan at configured times , things good so far, my understanding, I dont think reboot is required for SEP ( AV/AS)
But even then when we install a sofware ( upgrade from sAV) there are lot of Dlls which get replaced or changed
newer dll's can have more or less functions or a different method of accessing those functions which is needed for the installed program to work.
windows would lock this file while it is in use, preventing it from being deleted or changed untill all connections to that file have been closed, if you are upgrading from SAV you can see lot of driveers marked for delition in the device manager list.
If any other program using the particular dll SEP installation wishes to change can be closed then there is no problem. The installation routine detects the open program and either asks us to close it or automatically closes it for us. The dll can then be safely replaced and work can continue. As an example try removing ms office while internet explorer is open
so when you have upgraded the SAV to SEP system reboots
One of these first stages is to check for the existence of the previously mentioned start up file. In this file is a line for each dll that needs to be replaced. This line holds the name and location of the new dll and the name of the dll it will replace
Though its running fine, its would be good we can reboot it atleast once.
if its on Linux, i dont think reboot is ever required.