My preference has always been to design reports with the Crystal Reports application, save as .rpt files and then reference them in my application by using either the crystal viewer control or otherwise. I usually do not design reports via code. Also I only use stored procedures for the crystal database selection.

So, I would say start by using Crystal Reports to build a simple report with a stored procedure for the query, then save it (rpt). Next start useing the viewer control in vb to integrate into your ap by opening and run the saved report. Crystal has good documentation online to get started, or I've seen many examples here you can search for.