“If not exists” fails on SQL CE

Question

I\'ve got an unexpected problem. I\'m making a script to update the schema on a SQL CE database. This won\'t run:

if not exists
(
    Select column_name from         


        

Answer 1

It appears that SQL CE does not support any procedural extensions at all; only DDL and DML like from the 1970s.

You will either have to put procedural logic in your application (C# or whatever) or go to an embeddable database with procedural extensions, like MySQL.