>I have to say, if I tell a machine to pull the records I want and it refuses I will curse the programmers who made it do that. Give the user an ability to escape if it's taking too long. Give them them the ability to provide more criteria. Tell them to be prepared to wait. Leave the decision making to the humans. ANYTHING else is user-hostile.
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I think you're wrong at this point and the solution I provided to Dmitry is a good one. In fact, I discussed the exact same problem while ago and Mark McCasland suggested to use count first. If my memory serves me right, Nancy Folsom also gave the same suggestion. You also participated in this thread with the ideas to Cancel SQL Select.

Let me find this thread then.