US Patent 9158814 Obtaining partial results from a database query

A database query governor determines when a query cannot be executed within a defined time threshold, but still executes the query or some variant of the query so partial results for the query may be returned to the user after executing for less than the defined time threshold, instead of an error message indicating the query was not executed at all. The partial results provide information to the user that may be sufficient for some applications, or may indicate to the user how the query could be modified to run in less time.