Not really.  Either way, it's going to involve a lot of data movement
on the backend.

Is it possible for you to just put a view on the front-end and order
the columns there and just allow your end users to use the view?

--
arbert
------------------------------------------------------------------------

There is no supported method in SQL Server of moving columns in a table
except by dropping and re-creating the column.  But you certainly don't have
to do it one-by-one...

Let's say we had the following table:

CREATE TABLE out_of_order
(
 ColZ INT,
 ColY INT,
 ColX INT
)

We could create a new table with all of the same columns, in the right
order:

CREATE TABLE in_order
(
 ColX INT,
 ColY INT,
 ColZ INT
)

... and then INSERT all of the data from the other table:

INSERT in_order (ColX, ColY, ColZ)
SELECT ColX, ColY, ColZ
FROM out_of_order

... and then it's a simple matter of dropping the old table and re-naming
the new one:

DROP TABLE out_of_order

sp_rename 'in_order', 'out_of_order', 'table'