Placing the repeating form in a wrapper subform fixed the problem... but I am still wondering if this is the only way of achieving it.
To be more clear, with the example below, when the repeating subform is not in the wrapper, the data from the multiple instances of this subform are not grouped together:
However, if I specify a default number of instances (let say 5), the data from these 5 instances are grouped together, but any additional would also fall to the end of the XML data file. see below (instances 1 thru 5 together; 6 and 7 at the bottom).
Is this the normal behavior?
As indicated, placing the repeating subform in a wrapper fixes the concern.