Aliasing column names in SQL server

Question

Is there a way in SQL server to alias column names for a particular table and store the aliases somewhere such that you can access the aliases while querying? I have a table where I cannot change column names and I am trying to figure out if there is a way to alias them to make them more user friendly.

Answer 1

CREATE VIEW vw_RenameTable
AS
Begin

   Select GoodName1 = DumbName1
          ,GoodName2 = DumbName2
   From MyTable

End

Answer 2

A view would be the natural answer to the question. But, if you want to access the columns in the same table, you can use computed columns:

alter table mytable add bettercolumn as [Bad Ugly Name];

You can then use the computed column in a select on the same table .