handling tabular data in python--newbie question

[hyena]

Hi,
  Just jump in python few days. I am wondering how to store and index a 
table in python effectively and easily.I think the basic data types are not 
very straight foward to handle a table (eg, from csv or data base.)

  I have a csv file, the first row of it is column names and the rest rows 
are data. There are some tens of columns and hundreds rows in the file. I am 
planning to use the column names as variables to access data, currently I am 
thinking of using a dictionary to store this file but did not figure out a 
elegant way to start.

  Any comments and suggestions are wellcomed. Please forgive me if this 
question is too naive , and yes, I did search google  a while but did not 
find what I want.

Thanks