What is the best way to select the first two records of each group by a “SELECT” command?

Question

For instance I have the following table:

id group data
1 1 aaa
2 1 aaa
3 2 aaa
4 2 aaa
5 2 aaa
6 3 aaa
7 3 aaa
8 3 aaa

What is the best way to

Answer 1

select a.*
from Tablename a
where 
(
   select count(*) 
   from Tablename as b
   where a.group = b.group and a.id >= b.id
) <= 2

• SQLFiddle Demo