SQL Server - Does column order matter?

Question

In terms of performance and optimizations:

• When constructing a table in SQL Server, does it matter what order I put the columns in?
• Does it matter if

Answer 1

In SQL Server 2005, placement of nullable variable length columns has a space impact - placing nullable variable size columns at the end of the definition can result in less space consumption.

SQL Server 2008 adds the "SPARSE" column feature which negates this difference.

See here.