A developer built a complex dynamic email with many data variants.

To collect a representative sample from a larger data set, the developer should use the NTILE (C) SQL function. The NTILE function is used to distribute rows into a specified number of approximately equal-sized buckets or tiles, which can be useful for sampling purposes.

Example usage:

SELECT * FROM ( SELECT *, NTILE(10) OVER (ORDER BY SomeField) AS TileNumber FROM LargeDataSet ) AS Sample WHERE TileNumber = 1

This query divides the dataset into 10 tiles and selects rows from the first tile, effectively providing a sample.