PSQL: Limit Execution Time Of Statements

You can limit the amount of time that postgres will execute a statement by setting a hard timeout. By default the timeout is 0 (see show statement_timeout;) which means statements will be given as much time as they need.

If you do want to limit your statements, to say, 1 second, you can set the execution time like so

> set statement_timeout = '1s';
SET
> show statement_timeout;
 statement_timeout
-------------------
 1s
(1 row)

Any queries taking longer than 1 second will be aborted with the following message output

ERROR:  canceling statement due to statement timeout

Via jbranchaud/til.