Select latest two records per group

Question

hi there,
i've been googling around and still can't really find an appropriate solution to retrieve two most recent records per group in one sql. Is this even possible?
Let's say there is a MyLife table :
ID, Event , RecordedDate
1. 1, 'Fell down the stairs', '20-DEC-07'
2. 1, 'Fell down the stairs', '22-DEC-07'
3. 1, 'Fell down the stairs', '23-DEC-07'
4. 2, 'Tried to kiss santa', '23-DEC-07'
5. 3, 'Reindeer stolen', '24-DEC-07'
6. 4, 'Chimney Broke', '25-DEC-07'
Output should be :
2. 1, 'Fell down the stairs', '22-DEC-07'
3. 1, 'Fell down the stairs', '23-DEC-07'
4. 2, 'Tried to kiss santa', '23-DEC-07'
5. 3, 'Reindeer stolen', '24-DEC-07'
6. 4, 'Chimney Broke', '25-DEC-07'

Answer 1

I believe that something along these lines would be portable to most other databases.
SQL> SELECT id, event, recordeddate
  2  FROM mylife o
  3  WHERE recordeddate = (SELECT MAX(recordeddate) FROM mylife i
  4                        WHERE o.id = i.id)
  5  UNION ALL
  6  SELECT id, event, recordeddate
  7  FROM mylife o
  8  WHERE recordeddate = (SELECT MAX(recordeddate) FROM mylife i
  9                        WHERE o.id = i.id and
10                              i.recordeddate < (SELECT MAX(recordeddate)
11                                                FROM mylife ii
12                                                WHERE i.id = ii.id))
13  ORDER BY id, recordeddate;
        ID EVENT                     RECORDEDDAT
         1 Fell down the stairs      22-DEC-2007
         1 Fell down the stairs      23-DEC-2007
         2 Tried to kiss santa       23-DEC-2007
         3 Reindeer stolen           24-DEC-2007
         4 Chimney Broke             25-DEC-2007John