> One idea Tom had was to make it only active in a transaction,
> so you do:
>
> BEGIN WORK;
> SET TIMEOUT TO 10;
> UPDATE tab SET col = 3;
> COMMIT
>
> Tom is concerned people will do the SET and forget to RESET
> it, causing all queries to be affected by the timeout.
And what? Queries would be just aborted. It's not critical event
to take responsibility from user.
Vadim