If you're using calculated items defined in your information map or in CI Studio, the tips from @LinusH are invaluable for setting up your environment (SQL_FUNCTIONS=ALL, making sure all your libnames have the exact same settings except SCHEMA=, etc.). And the option statement below, combined with capturing the query from your CI core log (on the mid tier) and running it in EG with a proc sql statement ("proc sql loops=1000 _method feedback;") will let you see if that calculated item is being passed or not:
ACCESS ENGINE: SQL statement was not passed to the DBMS, SAS will do the processing
If SAS has to do the processing, it will download all the data, then do the calculation on the compute server.
If, on the other hand, your question is more about the queries that get generated from the information map for non-calculated fields, there is no switch to control that; it's always generated sql that's executed using the normal SAS/ACCESS & proc sql method