You are not limited to putting attributes and sets on the left-hand side of data statements. You may also initialize scalar variables in the data section. When a scalar variable's value is fixed in a data section, we refer to it as a parameter.

As an example, suppose your model uses an interest rate of 8.5% as a parameter. You could input the interest rate as a parameter in the data section as follows:

DATA:

  INTEREST_RATE = .085;

ENDDATA

As with set attributes, you can initialize multiple parameters in a single statement. Suppose you also add the inflation rate to your model. You could initialize both the interest rate and inflation rate in the same data statement as follows:

DATA:

  INTEREST_RATE, INFLATION_RATE = .085, .03;

ENDDATA