You can't. There are some VERY generic things you can find out about the report, and you can do this by using one of the ReportDocument events. But CR isn't designed to pass it's data to VB.NET once the report starts running.

Yes, you can update a database using a stored procedure. However, this is a feature of CR XI and I explain it in the Crystal Reports Encyclopedia book. To be honest, I haven't tried this using .NET yet, and I don't know if it has that functionality in it. Thus, I don't cover it in the .NET Programming book that I have out. I'll have to try it in .NET 2005 and see if it works or not.