HP Intelligent Management Center Standard Software Platform - Manual (Page 108)

About the report design environment
Design tab
When working with Crystal Reports, you will probably use the Design tab
more than any other part of the program.
The Design tab is the place you do most of the initial work when creating a
report. It designates and labels the various sections of the report. You can
do the initial formatting, place objects in the sections where you want them
to appear, specify sorting, grouping, and totaling needs, and so forth.
The Design tab provides a very efficient environment for designing a report
because you work in the tab with data representations, not with data itself.
When a field is placed on the report, the program uses a frame to identify
the field on the tab; it does not retrieve the data. Thus, you can add and
delete fields and other objects, move them around, set up complex formulas,
and more, without tying up the computer or network resources needed to
gather the data.
The report created in the Design tab is a kind of virtual report; it has the
structure and instructions for creating the final report, but it is not the report
itself. To turn the Design tab report into a final report or into a report that you
can fine-tune, you "just add data." You do this whenever you preview the
report, print it, or output it in any other way. The actual data will now appear
in the report.
108 Crystal Reports 2008 SP3 User's Guide
Introduction to Reporting 6
About the report design environment