What does reference do?

[Tag]

Hey, im looking into just creating a field with the same name. I know
you can use reference to do this, but i was just wondering why/how it
is that refrence can allow you to do this, yet you cannot simply create
a new field with the same name as another field if it was stored under
a different element(group)? Does microsoft have any documentation on
this?

 

[Greg Collins [InfoPath MVP]]

InfoPath makes heavy use of schema referencing. I.E. It creates a "global" node of a particular name. If you want a node with the same name, it must reference the one already created.

The alternative is to create you schema outside of InfoPath with a schema editor like XML Spy... but keep in mind that these externally created schemas are "locked" in InfoPath and cannot be modified except for outside of InfoPath. This makes development very difficult unless you are sure you are "final" on your schema.

The other alternative is to just create a node with a slightly different name.