Board Thread:Lua Help/@comment-3320283-20140811023705/@comment-131168-20140811101417

Speaking from my own recent experience, I think it's "once per page that includes a template invoking the module loading the data".

Just testing now with a module that loads a table of data at the beginning and with a function that outputs os.clock at the end, invoking that function 4 times in a row results in

0.00353112 0.004606856 0.005776322 0.006875526

So it looks like about .0024 was spent getting everything loaded up, then .0011 to use that function each time. The numbers are something like that each time the page is loaded again.

I don't have a suggestion for best way to handle large amounts; I've been kind of wondering along the same lines.