search mechanism in openldap

["Kamal R. Prasad" <kamalp@acm.org>]

Hello,

I am working on a software that wishes to generate hierarchial information
from a relational database. It is also supposed to accept queries like (get
me objevt from this tree AND this tree) or (get me object with attribute
value = X and object with attrval = Y).

 I found that openldap already has this functionality. However, I have no
requirement for the data to be accessed across machines as the ldap protocol
enables. Is there anyway one can bypass the ldap server to achieve this
functionality -or where exactly is this functionality present?

Does openldap optimize searches in some way? Who exactly handles the
searches when a client sends in a request? is it slapd or berkeley db4? What
is the performance overhead of running slapd on the same box just to get
this functionality?

thanks
-kamal