Rebecca Lewis has a two-parter. First up is a post covering the guard rails available in IQP:
When Microsoft introduced Intelligent Query Processing in SQL Server 2019 and expanded it in SQL Server 2022 and 2025, the message was simple: upgrade, enable the right compatibility level, and the optimizer will quietly make your queries faster. Features like batch mode on rowstore, memory grant feedback, scalar UDF inlining, and parameter-sensitive plan (PSP) optimization all promise “automatic performance.”
But buried in Microsoft’s documentation is a reality worth understanding: Some IQP features can reduce or discontinue feedback when performance becomes unstable. This is intentional. IQP includes guard rails—safety mechanisms that change or stop certain feedback behaviors if they prove counterproductive.
Part two tells us how to figure out if an IQP feature got the works:
Memory Grant Feedback was introduced in SQL Server 2019 and enhanced in SQL Server 2022+. Microsoft documents several plan attributes that reveal how the engine adjusted or suspended feedback. These attributes appear under the MemoryGrantInfo node in the execution plan.
And stay tuned for part three.