How can I re-start the DB from scratch without damaging OpenLDAP?

[Alessandro Bottoni <alessandrobottoni@interfree.it>]

I'm studying OpenLDAP and, from time to time, I need to delete the existing 
database and re-start from scratch (because I'm still experimenting with LDAP 
in order to find the right directory structure for a new application).

Can I simply stop the LDAP daemon, delete the whole database directory 
(var/lib/ldap, in my case) and restart the LDAP daemon? 

Is this method too brutal?

Is there any "canonical" or "suggested" method to delete the old DB and 
re-start from scratch?

I'm using OpenLDAP 2.1.30 with the default BDB back-end on Mandrake 10.1.

(I do not need to save the content of the old DB, at the moment.)

Many thanks in advance for you attention

-----------------------------------
Alessandro Bottoni