Sorry it has taken me so long to respond - I was out for the holidays here in the US.
Some commands will definitely run faster. The "IN" command is generally processed faster by the database and a set of multiple "OR" statements, so using " RULEJ.URULE_CODE in (...)" is probably responsible for a significant part of the speed increase. I generally use commands for all but the most simple reports (1-2 tables) that I write because I can write better, more efficient SQL than Crystal will automatically create and there are a lot of things I can do in SQL that it's not possible to do by joining tables in Crystal.
The Performance Timing is a good way to look at relative speed between reports, but I wouldn't necessarily count on the times to be absolutely accurate in all cases. For example, if your report is run through an application, it may be slower due to the need to load the assemblies/library files that are used by the SDK into memory.
I'm glad this is working better for you!
-Dell