Within SQL Server Management Studio, Query Editor is a language editor in which you can create and execute Transact-SQL statements against a database. It includes features such as IntelliSense, statement completion, and formatting.

Query Editor connects to and executes queries on a Microsoft SQL Server database by using the .NET Compact Framework Data Provider for SQL Server (System.Data.SqlClient). For Microsoft SQL Server Compact 3.5 databases, Query Editor uses the SqlServerCeClient provider together with the Tabular Data Stream (TDS) protocol.

TDS is a protocol used by the SqlServerCeClient provider to transport Transact-SQL statements across a network. The TDS Server, developed for integration with Query Editor, is a process on the smart device that listens for and receives the TDS packets and then parses out the Transact-SQL statements. The Transact-SQL statements are then passed to the SQL Server Compact 3.5 database.

SQL Server Compact 3.5 supports only a subset of the Transact-SQL commands used by SQL Server. When you use SQL Server Management Studio to query a SQL Server Compact 3.5 database, unsupported commands are removed from queries. The query execution component then connects to the specified database and executes the query.

Query Editor includes an upper query pane and a lower Results pane. The Results pane displays the information retrieved by the executed query. The data in the Results pane is read-only.

Besides using SQL Server Management Studio to access and create SQL Server Compact 3.5 databases, you can also use SQL Server Compact 3.5 Query Analyzer on the smart device.