InfoPath Dev

Hello I am under the gun to create a form with a secondary data source which has approx 9K records. Due to time constraints, I used a SharePoint list for this ... however, there must be some sort of record limit when using a secondary data source from a SP list. I tried to take the Excel '07 version of the data to create/export am XML file. I did manage to get this to work in preview mode, however, when publishing as a web enabled form, I faced an error message. I am not wanting anything terribly complicated (time and know-how) but not sure how to solve this. I also tried to group the data (in SharePoint) into separate folders to reduce initial list size, but info path doesn't seem to like this. Thoughts?

I am not sure on the size limit, but did you check the "Store a copy of the data in the form template" option when creating the data connection with the XML file? If not I think it will give you an error because it cannot find the XML file that you referenced in the IP form. I could be wrong though.

I wonder if you can create a view on your list with the item count set to 9K.  Then within your InfoPath form try reading from that view.  This article show you how to read from a view:

 http://www.infopathdev.com/forums/p/8824/31485.aspx#31485