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.