To effectively know and use Novell's DirXML, you must know and understand the trace files. This article is not only an excellent reference to the trace file, but provides insight into some of the lessor known processes within the IDM engine.
EVERYTHING coming from the application side will pass through input transforms and schema mapping and EVERYTHING that gets send on to the application will run through schema mapping and output transform.
This includes queries and their search results as well as status messages and direct, out-of-band object modifications. Even part of the driver start-up communication will pass through these.