How to add timeout for threads which are running using ThreadPoolExecutor

Question

I am trying change my existing functionality with ThreadPoolExecutor. I was unable to achieve fully.
Here is my issue.
I was creating multiple threads for independent DB update operations. And was calling join with time value on the each thread, for any reason if the db update hangs so that thread should die.
Now am trying use a nice ThreadPoolExecutor so that it can run and queue the threads nicely. But how do I create the timeout values for the threads which are in the ThreadPool. For any reason if the thread hangs then timeout will take care of killing the thread. When we use execute method submit the runnable task its not guaranteed that thread will run immediately. So when the executor will execute the submitted task is not know.
Probably I might be wrong some where.
Thanks.

Answer 1

Future task = threadPoolExecutor.submit(...);
//this will block until it finishes or times out.
task.get(REQUEST_TIMEOUT, TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS);