Automatic transactions in SELECT...

Hi all,

We're in the process of deploying 9.2.1 to support an internal
application we've been working on for the last few months. One of our
programmers has recently complained that we get occasional hangs because
"postgres automatically runs SELECT statements in a transaction that
requires an explicit commit".

That makes little sense and sounds like a dangling transaction, but in
fairness I wanted to confirm that there isn't a set of defaults or flags
that might cause the appearance of this behavior in version 9. I've been
unable to find any references on this and would greatly appreciate
comments or pointers to docs that would help to clarify the issue.

Thanks,

-Tom