title: Using Reporting Services (SSRS) as a reference in an ASP.NET Core site
body: <p>I struggled to find a solution for this for days so I wanted to share my situation. I'm converting an existing ASP.NET MVC application over to ASP.NET Core MVC. However the biggest change with using the ASP.NET Core, is that the <code>System.Web</code> namespace is a no go. However typically, SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) is typically added as a WebReference to a project, which is based on - you guessed it, <code>System.Web</code>.</p>
  
  <p>So I needed to find an alternative way to be able to hit the SSRS endpoint for executing reports. For my scenario, I primarily wanted PDF's (though the call to SSRS's <code>Render</code> method allows you to pick what the export format is).</p>
  
  <p>The solution to this problem presented it's own problems, most notably an error to the tune of:</p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>Microsoft.ReportingServices.Diagnostics.Utilities.MissingSessionIdException: The session identifier is missing. A session identifier is required for this operation.</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>So my two questions I ended up answering that might be of value to others were, How do I use SSRS without System.Web, and how do I solve the error about <em>"Missing session identifier"</em></p>