really basic questions about backup and restore

[Craig White <craigwhite@azapple.com>]

man slapcat says...

EXAMPLES
To make a text backup of your SLAPD database  and  put  it  in  a  file
called ldif, give the command:
     /usr/sbin/slapcat -l ldif

easy enough...
but of course, you can't use that to restore your directory because of
the fields creatorsName: createTimestamp: modifiersName:
ModifyTimestamp: I can probably do search/replace to clean this up if
needed.

if I simply do an ldapsearch '(objectclass=*)' > file, as long as I can
do it with say rootdn, I will get the whole db into this file. Are
either/both ordered well enough to import again into an empty directory?
Is there a better way? Obviously, I am thinking about backing up in a
nightly cron script.

Thanks,

Craig