In day-to-day development on discoverize, our Orchard based custom portal software, I use CompactView to look into my local instance's SQL CE database file if that's what I need to do. Dropping a Table from my Orchard.sdf Database Today, I was experimenting with some migrations code and needed to undo some table creation so that I could run an improved version on the same DB. I hoped for CompactView to get the job done, but somehow I couldn't get around how to do it from there. I tried running the following script from its SQL editor: ALTER TABLE [Discoverize_Management_UsersEntriesPartRecord] DROP CONSTRAINT [PK__Discoverize_Management_UsersEntriesPartRecord__000000000000104D]; DROP TABLE [Discoverize_Management_UsersEntriesPartRecord]; Unfortunately, CompactView told me that the table was currently in use: I was a bit baffled by this error. Somehow I had expected it to just work. SqlCeCmd to the Rescue Well, all is not lost. For some tasks I've already used the SQL Compact Command Line Tool in the past and it was waiting to be used again. This is what I first tried (without the newlines): SqlCeCmd40.exe -d "Data Source=App_Data\Sites\Default\Orchard.sdf" -q "ALTER TABLE [Discoverize_Management_UsersEntriesPartRecord] DROP CONSTRAINT [PK__Discoverize_Management_UsersEntriesPartRecord__000000000000104D]; DROP TABLE [Discoverize_Management_UsersEntriesPartRecord];" Unfortunately, this query returned an error: There was an error parsing the query. [ Token line number = 1,Token line offset = 148,Token in error = DROP ] This error referred to the DROP in the DROP TABLE statement which surprised me but a simple workaround was to just send two queries to the DB instead of a single one: SqlCeCmd40.exe -d "Data Source=..\src\Orchard.Web\App_Data\Sites\Default\Orchard.sdf" -q "ALTER TABLE [Discoverize_Management_UsersEntriesPartRecord] DROP CONSTRAINT [PK__Discoverize_Management_UsersEntriesPartRecord__000000000000104D]" (-1 rows affected) C:\Projects\discoverize\tools>SqlCeCmd40.exe -d "Data Source=..\src\Orchard.Web\App_Data\Sites\Default\Orchard.sdf" -q "DROP TABLE [Discoverize_M anagement_UsersEntriesPartRecord];" (-1 rows affected) Checking back with CompactView, I verified that the table was now successfully deleted. Do it Step by Step I'm not a guru with SQL CE databases but verifying that my syntax was correct and breaking the task into smaller pieces already got me back on track. Happy coding!

Today, I faced the exception mentioned in the post title: SQL Server Compact timed out waiting for a lock. The default lock time is 2000ms for devices and 5000ms for desktops. The default lock timeout can be increased in the connection string using the ssce: default lock timeout property. (Plus some session details). Circumstances The exception was thrown in my local dev environment while working on our Orchard CMS based portal software discoverize, calling any page in the portal. Obviously, something was wrong not with a single page but rather with a piece of infrastructure. Interestingly enough, only a few moments before trying to open the web site I had done some database manipulation using SqlCeCmd deleting some unneeded columns from one of our tables. It seems that after that the site broke. Solutions tried I tried to get hold of the DB like this: stop and start the web site in IIS (using appcmd stop site "discoverize" and appcmd stop site "discoverize") – no change take DB offline by renaming the file – waited a few moments, renamed it back – no change! Here I started wondering where the lock is saved – is it inside the DB? took the whole application pool offline and restarted it – bang! That helped. I now have my site back up and running and can continue develepment. Conclusion If you encounter the SQL CE timeout error during development inside a web application, restarting the app's app pool will probably get you back to work. Happy coding!

Today, I faced the exception mentioned in the post title: SQL Server Compact timed out waiting for a lock. The default lock time is 2000ms for devices and 5000ms for desktops. The default lock timeout can be increased in the connection string using the ssce: default lock timeout property. (Plus some session details). Circumstances The exception was thrown in my local dev environment while working on our Orchard CMS based portal software discoverize, calling any page in the portal. Obviously, something was wrong not with a single page but rather with a piece of infrastructure. Interestingly enough, only a few moments before trying to open the web site I had done some database manipulation using SqlCeCmd deleting some unneeded columns from one of our tables. It seems that after that the site broke. Solutions tried I tried to get hold of the DB like this: stop and start the web site in IIS (using appcmd stop site "discoverize" and appcmd stop site "discoverize") – no change take DB offline by renaming the file – waited a few moments, renamed it back – no change! Here I started wondering where the lock is saved – is it inside the DB? took the whole application pool offline and restarted it – bang! That helped. I now have my site back up and running and can continue develepment. Conclusion If you encounter the SQL CE timeout error during development inside a web application, restarting the app's app pool will probably get you back to work. Happy coding!