title: Save SSRS report as PDF in .net Winforms app without rendering report
body: <p>I've read a lot of posts about this and I think there's an underlying issue I'm missing. </p>
  
  <p>I want to be able to take the URI of my report on SSRS, capture the stream and save it as a PDF. Fairly straight forward. However if I use a report viewer control in my form and specify the server URI and path in the GUI properties as:</p>
  
  <p><strong>URI</strong>: <code>\\\SQLReports\Reports</code></p>
  
  <p><strong>Path</strong>: <code>\Test\TestReport</code></p>
  
  <p>The viewer errors saying it cant connect to the server, error 404. </p>
  
  <p>If I use a webclient and </p>
  
  <pre><code>WebClient.Downloaddata("http://sqlreports/Reports/Pages/Report.aspx?ItemPath=%2fTEST%2ftestreport) 
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I get a file and data but its just the HTML of the webpage, unsurprisingly. </p>
  
  <p>Is there something else I'm missing here? Version differences between report viewer of the SSRS server and my local machine? (running the compiled <code>exe</code> on the server has the same issue) adding the <code>rs command render = PDF</code> to the URI doesn't change the outcome either. </p>
  
  <p>I'm at a loss. I'm sure there's an easier way to capture the SSRS report as a PDF and write out the memory stream but as the PDF data and not HTML markup.</p>