online backup with slapcat?

["fuser9bb@hotpop.com" <fuser9bb@hotpop.com>]

I am using openldap-2.2.15 on RHES3. We run an online backup of our LDAP 
server each night based on the output of ldapsearch. However, we are 
considering an offline backup using slapcat using:

stop slapd
slapcat
start slapd

I like slapcat because it's fast and can be used to backup internal 
slapd attributes. However, the caveat to using slapcat is that it only 
works against a database that is closed.

Some questions:

1. is there a way to run slapcat against a live system, i.e., to perform 
an online backup?

2. if not, can we get near-slapcat speed and all of the internal 
attributes that slapcat can backup using ldapsearch or a comparable tool?

3. is there an even better way to backup openldap databases?