Getting a report using the CoreService has a relatively simple learning curve, though setting up that first client seems to be tricky.

I'll point outshare examples and references for:

1. SetSetting up a client environment
2. Get dataGetting data
3. ReportReporting (.csv, for example)

Client

Honestly, I preferred netTCP on the server because it seemed to "just work" and was simple enough to set up, but it depends on your access to the environment.

For a full overview, see the Documentation.

Otherwise:

• Check out @puf's example on Stack Overflow.
• See the specific Cookbook page for setting up a client (without an XML file).
• Or see my BA Toolkit example based on the above.

For a proper setup, you probably want to read @EricHuiza's post on How to correctly dispose of a WCF client. Also note that by 2013 SP1, the product shipped with an already-created .NET client.

It's also a good idea to configure a secured connection.

Get Data

The "easy" part is getting the data. It's up to you on how to iterate on it.

I would recommend going Publication-by-Publication, recursively looking through folders, unless you're really looking for the relationships for each item (hint: Where Used is your friend). The hard part is what kind of data you want and format.

Calls would look something like:

foreach (XElement pubElement in bluePrintXml.Nodes())
   {
    var idAttribute = pubElement.Attribute("ID");
    if (idAttribute == null) continue; // I'm ignoring something but forgot why
    var publicationUri = idAttribute.Value;

    // DoStuff();

    pub++;
  consoleTracer.WriteLine(pubElement.Attribute("Title"));
  }

See my older BA Toolkit project for an example report to get authorization details using a console application. Pardon any hacks where I tried to figure out relationships using string manipulation. :-)

Report

Exporting your data to CSV seems popular enough for use in spreadsheets.

I found a nice CSV library from Black Belt Coder, though I'm sure there are other examples and projects for working with CSV.

Considering your version, I suspect you're working on an audit of some sort or perhaps upgrade. Consider a backup in case you're looking to also manipulate data and be sure to start and test with smaller sets of data, ideally on a test environment. Off-topic, but I'd recommend help if you need to get set up relatively quickly so you can focus on the requirements.

Finally, that UI is relatively fast at getting lists of data because it only retrieves and load IDs and titles in several places like the main list view. Getting all of the data in a folder will take more time, so be sure to either test and get smaller sets of data or up your configuration and time-outs.

But start with "Hello World" and go from there.