(In reply to comment #4)
> I made the following test over an empty DB:
> 
> time syncevolution --daemon=no  database=pim-manager-test
> backend=evolution-contacts --import ./5000vCard.txt
> ...
> real	7m6.102s
> user	0m55.495s
> sys	0m7.416s
> 
> I noticed that during the import at regular time slots the printout stuck.
> Since our HW does not allow fast r/w operations I'm just wondering if during
> the import/sync a r/w operation is performed for any contact.

For every contact, there are potentially multiple writes. I'm less sure about
sync() calls, those might get batched together.

Benchmarks done by Openismus showed submitting contacts in batches is orders of
magnitude faster than writing one at a time. So addressing bug #52669 should
help a lot, as writing seems to be the primary bottleneck for initial imports.