ASP.NET Development

So, never really got into doing a lot of web development in the last 20+ years. The first time I saw html with script embedded in the html I decided I would rather stick to my nice clean world of legacy VB and then move into .NET application development. Client, Server or database development, it didn't matter, as they have nice separation of concerns.

But, I really need to get skilled up as I've got ideas and products I want to develop. Sticking to my legacy ways (which still pay the bills quite nicely) is not the correct path any more.

I've dabbled a few times, but never really had anything useful to develop, so I was pretty much doomed before I started.

This time, I do have something to develop, and it's big, using technologies I've not directly dealt with very much before.

So, I thought I start Visual Studio and go through the basics of getting a site up and running using ASP.NET MVC.

Trouble is, not sure if someone is trying to tell me something...

All I did was click on "Web"!!

Maybe tomorrow...

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Finding web reference option in Visual Studio

So, I've managed to avoid using SSRS reports for as much as possible, but the current project I'm on involves me having to re-visit that legacy piece of crap for their reporting needs.

Seriously? I couldn't think of a more static, unfriendly, rigid form of obtaining data from a system.

I could go into a full blown rant, but I've already done that with the team. Sorry guys.

Anyhow, I need to reference the SSRS Execution Service to bring back the data, which I can then push into Excel. Oh yes, my day job is awesome at the minute. Why not just consume the OData Atom feed from SSRS in Excel, you ask. Yes, would love to, except the business use MS Office 2010 and that doesn't accept OData feeds. :|

Anyway, as it's been about 8 years since I last used it, I couldn't remember how to reference the execution service. Google results was suggesting to add a reference to the asmx of the report server, which was not producing the generated code an I remembered. It was generating a soap client like a stock service.

After more playing around I found that I needed to reference it as a Web Reference and not a Service Reference. Except, in Visual Studio 2012 the Add WebReference has been removed (or maybe in the previous version?). Either way, I never really understood why it was removed.

Luckily I found this article on how to add a WebReference the *new* way.


BonCode: VS2010: Visual Studio 2010 - finding web reference option when working with Windows Forms Applications


Awesome, now I can try and gain back the couple of hours I lost trying to figure out what was wrong.

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