Back perl is experimental and known to be very buggy. I wouldn't plan on
using it.
OK, in light of that: What is the reasonable way to run some code to get
the data on demand? To give an example: one would like to generate a value
for the present traffic load on a nic to be included in a query?
The shell and tcl backends seem to make it at least possible but since
these are obsolete it doesn't seem very attractive. Aren't there any
"recommended" backends to generate ones own data?
Most distro's tend to ship ancient or at least fairly outdated versions
of OpenLDAP. You are generally better off doing something like using
Symas CDS' distribution, Buchan Milne's Mandriva packages (if using
Mandriva or RedHat), or building it yourself.
Yes, I'm sure you're right. It's just that it's harder to convince other
people to make that effort if they want to use ones stuff.