How to export limited rows from synchronized database from marketing cloud?

Question

We've few synchronized databases integrated in marketing cloud from sales cloud like "Lead" , "Enquiry", "Opportunity" etc. This tables are huge and ranges around 2 GB.

I want to export only some sample data and not the complete table through browser download. Haven't found any option to export limited number of rows.

Answer 1

Your best bet is to utilize a SQL query to pull your X rows into a separate DE and then export that.

For example:

SELECT TOP 2000 /* Only pulls the first 2k records */
   EmailAddress
   ,FirstName
   ,...... /* The rest of your attributes */
FROM ENT.[yourSyncDE]
ORDER BY NEWID() /* This makes it fairly random */

You then push this to another DE that has all the required attributes you want to pass. Then you go into this DE and export it as you wanted.

Answer 2

There aren't many options when it comes to setting up the Data Stream for Synchronised Data Extensions unfortunately, like setting a specific row limit.

The least you can do is configure the Synchronisation to either:

1) Synchronise only records created after X date. With this you could limit it to be created from October 2018 for an example. This is not going to get you a specific amount, but more of a ballpark which you can check first with SF reports.

2) Synchronise only records with a specific field value. You can use some existing field to determine which records you synchronise over, or alternatively you can create a new field (example - checkbox "MC-Synch") and mass-update the exact amount of records you would like to get synchronised over.

Here's where you can pick one of the options: