Databases: Getting values by column name

[Corey Coughlin]

Has anyone out there come up with a general purpose database table
like object that someone could use as a front end for any generic
database?  It seems like something that could be useful to a lot of
people.  Generally, we have a number of data structures in the
standard library, lists and dicts are built in while sets, queues, and
arrays are available in the standard library, it seems like tables
would be the next logical step.  It would probably make those
table-based computing people happy.  And it would be a natural, python
friendly front end to the db api.  You'd probably need a record class
with the ability to reference by position or column name, that
wouldn't be too hard.  Then a list-like container to hold the data,
with some functions to reference records, sort on some criteria,
select subsets, and so on. Is there a PEP out there for something like
this already, or is there a feature argument going on, or is it just
something nobody has gotten around to yet?