Accessing the SOAP API
The Report Server Web service uses Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) over HTTP and acts as a communications interface between client programs and the report server. The Web service provides two endpoints - one for report execution and one for report management - and consists of methods and a set of complex type objects that you can use to access the complete functionality of Reporting Services. To call the service, you must reference the Reporting Services Web Services Description Language (WSDL).
Referencing the Reporting Services WSDL
To call a Web service successfully, you must know how to access the service, what operations the service supports, what parameters the service expects, and what the service returns. WSDL provides this information in an XML document that can be read or processed by a computer.
The Report Server Web service is exposed in two different endpoints. The name of the WSDL file is different for each endpoint. The ReportingService2005 endpoint contains methods for managing objects in a Report Server. The WSDL for this endpoint is accessed through ReportService2005.asmx?wsdl.
- The ReportExecutionService endpoint allows developers to programmatically process and render reports in a Report Server. The WSDL for this endpoint is accessed through
ReportExecution2005.asmx?wsdl.
WSDL can be consumed by development kits that support SOAP and Web services, such as the Microsoft .NET Framework SDK.
The following example shows the format of the URL to the Reporting Services management WSDL file:
https://server/reportserver/ReportService2005.asmx?wsdl
The following table describes each element in the URL.
| URL element | Description |
|---|---|
server |
The name of the server on which the report server is deployed. |
reportserver |
The name of the folder that contains the XML Web service. This is configured during setup. |
<endpoint name>.asmx |
The name of the web service endpoint. |
For more information about the WSDL format, see the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) WSDL specification at http://www.w3.org/TR/wsdl.
See Also
Other Resources
Building Applications Using the Web Service and the .NET Framework
Report Server Web Service