Suppose you have table with many columns and often you need data from first 15 or 20 columns. You have to specify all the columns in your select statement. This procedure will select top N columns you want. All you have to do is to supply table name and number of columns you want

Here is the procedure

CREATE procedure TopNcolumns 
(
	@tableName varchar(100),
	@n int
)  
as    
Declare @s varchar(2000)    
set @s=''  
If @n>=0   
Begin  
	set rowcount @n  
	Select 
		@s=@s+','+ column_name 
	from 
		information_schema.columns   
	where 
		table_name=@tablename 
	order by 
		ordinal_position  
	Set rowcount 0  
	Set @s=substring(@s,2,len(@s)-1)  
	Exec('Select '+@s+' from '+@tablename)  
End  
else  
	Select 'Negative values are not allowed' as Error  

If you execute TopNColumns 'Mytable',12 then first 12 columns with data from the table Mytable will be displayed