InfoPath Dev

How does the order of the fields in a data source matter? Why is there the ability to move the fields up and down?

TIA
Dean

Probably helps a lot when you have groups would be one thing.

Also, I am sure there are technical reasons why you can do this -having to do with the schema and or speed on forms.

And from a practical design point of view, the ability to be able to move fields up and down and from group to group seems like a logical way to be able to visually see your fields and keep them together - especially with really complicated forms with tons of fields and groups.

Hi,

It is always a good idea to have all related fields at one place and you want the fields to be ordered in natural way.
For ex: if you take "Name","Age" and "Address", now you can't have this fields in "Address", "Age" and "Name" order. It doesn't make any sense to have fields in the order.

For a second question to have the ability to move the fields Up/Down is ,
for any product requirements and design can change any point of time and we want to change order of fields according to requirements and design.

The order of the fields in the data source define the xml schema. The schema is a contract which the xml files used must match. By changing the order of the items, you are changing the contract. This is fine if you do not have existing files using the old ordering. Infopath will create an upgrade.xsl to handle schema updates on the form.