I did a brief search online and didn't see anything about being able to access the ADO.Net data in design mode.
I haven't tried this myself yet, but you could try writing the data out to disk and include the schema. Then see if you can point to that file in Crystal and see the data.
ds.WriteXml(filename, XmlWriteMode.WriteSchema)
>This worked great.
>
>I created the schema using the dataset that was returned in my application, and not through a returned table.
>
>The report worked as expected in my application.
>
>However, in design mode I used the .xsd file but there were no data to work against.
>
>Is there a way to get data for the report so I can design the report with real data without running my application?
>
>Thanks.
Regards,
E.R. Gilmore