Koen Verbeeck (5/9/2012)

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Good question, learned something.

However, the question itself was a bit weird to read (at least for me, a non-native English speaker). I had to read it a few times to finally get it. And then answer wrong of course 😀

The CREATE TABLE reference doesn't describe the behaviour asked in the question. The following article does:

Use Column Sets

Adding a column set changes the behavior of SELECT * queries. The query will return the column set as an XML column and not return the individual sparse columns. Schema designers and software developers must be careful not to break existing applications.