>Again, it is far better to have your underlying columns match the order of the grid columns, instead of having the underlying columns in one order and then have the grid columns in another order. SQL provides the flexibility of arranging the columns in a different order than the physical column order.

OK, I'll bite ... Why is it "far better to have your underlying columns match the order of the grid columns".

(Having implemented "hundreds" of grids, which included: multiple sources per grid, multiple grids per source, related grids, multi-select grids, incremental grids, "calculated" columns, etc. .... and never having gotten hung up about "underlying column order").

For that matter, one could argue that the "column order" of the SQL Select should "match" the column order(s) of the base table(s) ... although I wouldn't.