How many columns are too many for a SQL Server 2005 table?

Question

I have a request to allow a dynamic table to have 1000 columns(randomly selected by my end users). This seems like a bad idea to me. It\'s a customizable table so it will

Answer 1

I have to disagree with everyone here.....I know it sounds mad but using tables with hundreds of columns is the best thing I have ever done.

Yes many columns frequently have null values; Yes I could normalise it to just a few tables and transpose; Yes it is inefficient

However it is incredibly fast and easy to analyze column data in endless different ways

Wasteful and inelegant - you'll never build anything as useful!