Try the statement later.

I got an error message I’d never seen before while altering a database.

Database is in transition. Try the statement later. (Microsoft SQL Server, Error: 952)

Try the statement later? What does that mean?

I altered a column in a test database and immediately tried to take it offline. That is when I got the error. After searching for the message I found this:

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en/sqlgetstarted/thread/e779230a-87bc-4cee-b223-98a029097dc1

One of the solutions was to search sys.dm_exec_requests for an alter process on that database. Sure enough it was suspended. I killed the SPID and the database was back online pretty quickly.