On 6/15/05, Steve Summers <sesummers@...> wrote:

> Here's a thought. I can't think of a situation where something other than a
> "select" could need this, so maybe it could be done with a non-standard SQL
> extension, similar to the "select first N..." syntax. Maybe "Select within N
> {where N is in seconds}"?

I think this is a very good (even if utterly non-standard) idea. I
would even go as far as to suggest "non-deterministic" select which
does not fail after the timeout elapses, but returns whatever partial
results it have.
Before Jim strikes this as a feature that does not ever work ;-) let
me give an example of search engine, where it could be useful, when
under heavy load, return incomplete search results to the clients
instead of "service unavailable" message.