That's good information. I did notice that the uc_flatrate_method table was indeed not present in the older version.

However, I had uc_flatrate enabled when I did the initial update, the initial update.php, and got the error.

It turned out I had an item in the cart. I do not know think that mattered. After the error appeared, I disabled the uc_flatrate in workflow_ng, but did not disable the module, and took out the product from the cart, and ran update.php again, but got the same error.

This may seem at odds with what you said above, but I believe that the cache had something to do with showing the error when it may have been corrected. I had to delete the cache, via the drupal developer module to get the error out of my browser. And I also repaired the MySQL db on the server, when after creating the table manually it did not show up in the db structure. Now, everything seems ok.

So your explanation may be correct. I can't say since I'm not sure if the browser was telling current info after I ran update.php, or whether the db structure was there until I did the db repair.

I think your suggestion of running update.php when you enable a new module is a good suggestion, and something I'll include in my bag of tricks. Thanks.