Importing module of data dicts and constants

[Nathan Harmston]

Hi All,

I ve got a single module which I m using to contain a lot of
dictionaries, constants, general information, which are used by
various other modules. However I can't seem to access them:

in data.py
_SEQTYPE_DNA = 0
_SEQTYPE_RNA = 1
_SEQTYPE_PROT = 2
_seqType = { "DNA":_SEQTYPE_DNA, "RNA":_SEQTYPE_RNA, "PROTEIN":_SEQTYPE_PROT }

but in test.py
from data import *

class Test(object):
        def __init__(self, type):
                  self.type = _seqType[type]
        def test(self):
                 return self.type

t = Test("DNA")
print t.test()

File "test.py", line 24, in __init__
    self.type = _seqType[type]
NameError: global name '_seqType' is not defined

I think I m doing something incredibly wrong/stupid here....
Can anyone help?

Many Thanks

Nathan

PS. I was wondering if the use of a data module to store constants and
dictionaries is good design??? or not?