I suppose what I really want is something that tells me how Apple's
system software interacts with openldap beneath, as Apple's docs seem
extremely limited in this respect.
Use the tools against a server set up to do extensive debug logging and
you'll see what the tools are sending to the server. You have a full
OpenLDAP server on OS X that you can use for that purpose. Add a line
"LDAPSERVER=-YES-" to /etc
/hostconfig and it will start automatically on boot. The configuration
files are in the standard /etc/openldap location.