Proof positive you need to keep writing code or your skills atrophy. This morning I needed to write some simple code to render an SSRS report as an image using the SSRS Web Services….

In VS, I added a Service Reference to ReportExecution2005.asmx and my proxy was dutifully generated. However, I couldn’t find ReportExecutionService – the only thing I saw that looked “about right” was ReportExecutionServiceSoap and ReportExecutionServiceSoapClient.

I flailed around for a bit and then realized I hadn’t actually added a Web Reference, I had added a Service Reference: Two different things. I killed my Service References, opened the Add Service Reference dialog, and clicked the Advanced button – The “Add a Web Reference isntead of a Service Reference” button was all I needed.