Thanks, Steve, but I've gotten this sorted out for the most part. It seems like if you're working with Delphi on both sides of a connection, and you can count on that forever going forward, then things can work fairly smoothly. Bruno has made clear that's all TMS is really interested in. But in the world of web apps, I'm not convinced that's a smart strategy. In particular, I use both a Windows host and a Linux host, mainly b/c I don't find building Delphi apps that run on Linux to be a very straightforward process. PHP is the language used on most Linux hosts for back-end activities; if you know C, C++, and javascript, then you know about 80% of PHP, although PHP has been diverging over time. The environmental stuff is different, but that's going to be the case anyway switching platforms -- just look at how quirky using WEB Core can be than using the VCL to accomplish the exact same tasks with the same components! I mean ... it comes with the territory, and is expected.
Anyway, I love TMS; I love their products; I love the fact that they're doing stuff that Embt should have been doing 10+ years ago; I realize they're just as resource constrained as anybody else today (except maybe Google, MS, Amazon, and IBM); and I can't fault them for sticking to their guns. I just wish the use of Linux wasn't such a stretch to do in Delphi or that it's only limited to people with bigger budgets. And that includes working with the most common back-end scripting language in the world today that's used on Linux platforms. Hint: it's NOT Delphi! Building web app clients in Delphi should not require the use of Delphi on the back-end. But that's just my opinion, and it's the source of a lot of my questions here. That's all.