SOAP RetrieveRequest returns internal Data Extension names

Question

I've raised this support ticket with ExactTarget Support, but they have been to assist so I am posting my question here.

I am using a SOAP RetrieveRequest (with a Retrieve SOAPAction) to get all data extension names using the following envelope:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<soapenv:Envelope xmlns:soapenv="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
    <soapenv:Header>
        <wsse:Security soapenv:mustUnderstand="1" xmlns:wsse="http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-wssecurity-secext-1.0.xsd">
            <wsse:UsernameToken wsu:Id="UsernameToken-32259181" xmlns:wsu="http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-wssecurity-utility-1.0.xsd">
                <wsse:Username>username</wsse:Username>
                <wsse:Password Type="http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-username-token-profile-1.0#PasswordText">password</wsse:Password>
            </wsse:UsernameToken>
        </wsse:Security>
    </soapenv:Header>
    <soapenv:Body>
        <RetrieveRequestMsg xmlns="http://exacttarget.com/wsdl/partnerAPI">
            <RetrieveRequest>
                <ObjectType>DataExtension</ObjectType>
                <Properties>CustomerKey</Properties>
                <Properties>Name</Properties>
            </RetrieveRequest>
        </RetrieveRequestMsg>
    </soapenv:Body>
</soapenv:Envelope>

This works as expected, but the SOAP response returns several other names that don't appear in my ExactTarget MC dashboard:

• _MobileAddress
• _MobileSubscription
• _PushAddress
• _PushTag
• first list
• second list
• qwerqwer

I've been informed that these are "internal extensions".

Surely this is a bug? Why would these internal DE's be returned? Is there a way of using a filter to exclude these internal extensions in the SOAP response? Perhaps you can use regex in filters, but I'm not sure.

Answer 1

The system ones can be easily identified because their names starts with an underscore, unfortunately there is not a way to filter those out in the API request. They would need to be filtered out after the data is returned from the API.

Answer 2

_MobileAddress is the MobileConnect Contact data, which is quite handy when scripting in MC messages. You can retrieve rows with lookupRows() in AMPScript and pull in additional personalization into your SMS responses. Not sure about the others.

Answer 3

These are typically called "data views" in the exacttarget platform.

For more info on other data views click here

I was able to dig up the following on the _MobileAddress dataview:

You can retrieve the following information on your contacts from the _MobileAddress data extension via AMPscript. For example, the AMPscript example below retrieves the mobile numbers for all contacts with a value of London from the City column:

 %%=Lookup("_MobileAdddress","MobileNumber","City",London)=%% Use the
 field names below to retrieve information from the _MobileAddress data
 extension:

Listing of DataView Columns

• CarrierID
• Channel
• City
• ContactID
• CountryCode
• CreatedBy
• CreatedDate
• FirstName
• IsHonorDST
• LastName
• MobileNumber
• ModifiedBy
• ModifiedDate
• Priority
• Source
• SourceObjectID
• State
• Status
• UTCOffset
• ZipCode