I think the only argument I can think to keep this setting is where people want to do this kind of limiting, not so much to do with memory or whatever, but to force a user to constrain his request to avoid long-hanging connections and large single queries on the DB (as opposed to OLTP style queries from web interfaces etc.). For example, an admin may want to limit CMDB GUI developers from doing stupid things, and by using this facility he is forcing them to use pagination instead ...

Hrm ... all of this indeed, is a different use-case then before - and no one has asked for it explicitly (not that I've heard of anyway) ... so I'm not sure how important this is ... just pointing out a case where I might still want to use such a setting (putting on my admin hat). I'd also want a per-certificate override, and a pony. Just sayin' :-).

If there is any chance you might agree with this @deepak, what is the cost of leaving the setting in? I guess that's the other perspective we have to consider.