sgcWebSockets and TMS Software compared

TMS FNC WebSocket

TMS Software · Commercial

WebSocket client and server components implementing RFC 6455, in one product. Its documentation lists four components, TTMSFNCWebSocketClient, TTMSFNCWebSocketServer, TTMSFNCWhatsAppServer and TTMSFNCWhatsAppReceiver, and states VCL on Win32 and Win64, and FMX on Win32, Win64, macOS, iOS, Linux and Android. RAD Studio 10.1 Berlin through 13 Florence.

Official page

TMS Sparkle

TMS Software · Commercial

A framework for network and internet programming, with classes for both client and server applications. Its HTTP server runs on the Windows http.sys stack, as a WebBroker Apache module on Linux, or through a self-contained socket server on Linux and Windows. It also provides server side WebSocket upgrade through IWebSocketUpgrader, available for Delphi XE8 or newer. Sparkle is the framework underneath TMS XData and TMS RemoteDB.

Official page

TMS MQTT

TMS Software · Commercial

A cross-platform messaging client library. Its product page describes it as implementing the full MQTT v3.1.1 and v5 specification, with a non-blocking multi-threaded component architecture, a non-visual logger component, and use in VCL, FMX and LCL applications on Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android and Raspberry Pi. The supported IDE list runs from RAD Studio XE3 to 13 Florence.

Official page

TMS AI Studio

TMS Software · Commercial

LLM and agent components for Delphi and C++ Builder. Its product page lists OpenAI, Google Gemini, xAI Grok, DeepSeek, Anthropic Claude, Perplexity Labs, Ollama and Mistral AI, function calling with customisable tools, retrieval augmented generation, multimodal input covering images, PDFs and audio files, and agents through a full MCP client and server protocol. Delphi 11 Alexandria through 13 Florence.

Official page

TMS FNC Cloud Pack

TMS Software · Commercial

Components for cloud services, described on its page as universal components for seamless access to Google, Microsoft, PayPal and many more cloud services. The listing covers file storage, payments, translation, calendar and contacts, logging, messaging and the AI services. It states full compatibility with VCL, FireMonkey and TMS WEB Core, so the same component set is available to a browser application compiled from Object Pascal.

Official page

Client and server in one product

TMS FNC WebSocket ships TTMSFNCWebSocketClient and TTMSFNCWebSocketServer in one product at one price. sgcWebSockets splits the two across editions. TsgcWebSocketClient compiles in the Standard edition, while every server component, TsgcWebSocketServer, TsgcWebSocketHTTPServer, TsgcWebSocketProxyServer and TsgcWebSocketLoadBalancerServer, sits inside {$IFDEF SGC_EDT_PRO} in sgcWebSocket.pas, so an sgcWebSockets server needs the Professional edition or above.

Object Pascal in the browser

TMS WEB Core compiles Object Pascal to JavaScript and gives the browser a TWebSocketClient with HostName, Port, Connect, Send and an OnDataReceived event. TMS FNC Cloud Pack components run there too. sgcWebSockets has no browser target at all. Its components compile to native code, so a browser front end is written in JavaScript or in some other framework, and it talks to an sgcWebSockets server over the wire like any other client.

The wider TMS range, and one renewal

TMS XData and TMS RemoteDB run on Sparkle, so Sparkle's IWebSocketUpgrader adds push to a host that is already there rather than adding a second one. TMS ALL-ACCESS renews the whole TMS range, grids, planners, charts and reporting included, alongside the networking products on one invoice. eSeGeCe All-Access covers the eSeGeCe libraries, which are networking, HTML over HTTP, crypto and signing, not general purpose UI controls.

AI providers, and where the chat component runs

TMS AI Studio lists Perplexity Labs among its providers. The TsgcAIChatProvider enum in sgcAI_Chat.pas has seven entries, aicpOpenAI, aicpAnthropic, aicpGemini, aicpDeepSeek, aicpOllama, aicpGrok and aicpMistral, and Perplexity is not one of them. Separately, sgcVer.inc defines SGC_AI only inside {$IFDEF MSWINDOWS}, so the TsgcAIChat component compiles on Windows only. The underlying provider classes and the MCP components are not restricted that way, but the chat component is.

MQTT on Raspberry Pi

The TMS MQTT page names Raspberry Pi in its platform list. The sgcWebSockets platform guards in sgcVer.inc cover Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS and Android, and there is a Lazarus package, but Raspberry Pi is not called out as a supported target anywhere in the source.

A WebSocket client, sgcWebSockets

Classes and members declared in sgcWebSocket.pas, sgcWebSocket_Classes.pas and sgcWebSocket_Client_Base.pas

uses
  sgcWebSocket, sgcWebSocket_Classes;

procedure TForm1.ClientMessage(Connection: TsgcWSConnection;
  const Text: string);
begin
  Memo1.Lines.Add(Text);
end;

procedure TForm1.Start;
begin
  FClient := TsgcWebSocketClient.Create(nil);
  FClient.Host := 'echo.example.com';
  FClient.Port := 443;
  FClient.TLS  := True;
  FClient.OnMessage := ClientMessage;
  FClient.WatchDog.Enabled := True;   // reconnects on its own
  FClient.Active := True;
  FClient.WriteData('hello');
end;

OnMessage is TsgcWSMessageEvent, declared as procedure(Connection: TsgcWSConnection; const Text: string) of object. WriteData is a procedure, while Connect and Disconnect are functions returning Boolean, so setting Active is the shortest way in.

A WebSocket client, TMS FNC WebSocket

Members taken from the TTMSFNCWebSocketClient reference

// TTMSFNCWebSocketClient documents HostName, Port, UseSSL,
// Active, Connect, Disconnect, Send, Ping, and the events
// OnConnect, OnDisconnect, OnMessageReceived,
// OnBinaryDataReceived, OnPing and OnPong.

Client.HostName := 'echo.example.com';
Client.Port     := 443;
Client.UseSSL   := True;
Client.Connect;
Client.Send('hello');

The reference does not document a reconnect mechanism, a subprotocol negotiation API or a compression extension for this component. Check the page yourself before relying on that.

MQTT over the same connection component

Declared in sgcWebSocket_Protocols.pas and sgcWebSocket_Protocol_MQTT_Client.pas

uses
  sgcWebSocket, sgcWebSocket_Classes, sgcWebSocket_Types,
  sgcWebSocket_Protocols, sgcWebSocket_Protocol_MQTT_Message;

procedure TForm1.MQTTPublish(Connection: TsgcWSConnection;
  aTopic, aText: String;
  PublishProperties: TsgcWSMQTTPublishProperties);
begin
  Memo1.Lines.Add(aTopic + ' = ' + aText);
end;

procedure TForm1.Start;
begin
  FClient := TsgcWebSocketClient.Create(nil);
  FClient.Host := 'broker.example.com';
  FClient.Port := 443;
  FClient.TLS  := True;

  FMQTT := TsgcWSPClient_MQTT.Create(nil);
  FMQTT.Client := FClient;                 // or a TsgcTCPClient
  FMQTT.MQTTVersion := mqtt5;
  FMQTT.OnMQTTPublish := MQTTPublish;

  FClient.Active := True;
  FMQTT.Subscribe('plant/+/temperature');
  FMQTT.Publish('plant/1/state', 'running');
end;

Assigning Client a TsgcTCPClient instead runs the same MQTT session over plain TCP rather than over WebSocket, with no other change. Subscribe and Publish are functions returning the packet identifier as a Word, and TwsMQTTVersion is (mqtt311, mqtt5).

An LLM call

Declared in sgcAI.pas and sgcAI_Chat.pas. SGC_AI is defined in the Enterprise edition on Windows

uses
  sgcAI, sgcAI_Chat;

procedure TForm1.ChatStream(Sender: TObject;
  const aChunk: string; var Cancel: Boolean);
begin
  Memo1.Text := Memo1.Text + aChunk;
end;

procedure TForm1.Ask;
var
  oChat: TsgcAIChat;
begin
  oChat := TsgcAIChat.Create(nil);
  try
    oChat.Provider := aicpAnthropic;
    oChat.ChatOptions.ApiKey := ReadApiKey;
    oChat.ChatOptions.Model  := 'claude-sonnet-4-5';
    oChat.SystemMessage := 'Answer in one sentence.';
    oChat.OnChatStream := ChatStream;
    oChat.ChatStream('Summarise this order.');
  finally
    oChat.Free;
  end;
end;

Switching provider is one enum assignment. Chat returns the whole answer as a string, ChatStream raises OnChatStream for each chunk and lets the handler cancel, and ChatAsync returns an IsgcFuture<string> on Delphi 2010 and later.