Question

What is the difference between a natural join and an inner join?

Answer 1

One significant difference between INNER JOIN and NATURAL JOIN is the number of columns returned.

Consider:

TableA                           TableB
+------------+----------+        +--------------------+    
|Column1     | Column2  |        |Column1  |  Column3 |
+-----------------------+        +--------------------+
| 1          |  2       |        | 1       |   3      |
+------------+----------+        +---------+----------+

The INNER JOIN of TableA and TableB on Column1 will return

SELECT * FROM TableA AS a INNER JOIN TableB AS b USING (Column1);
SELECT * FROM TableA AS a INNER JOIN TableB AS b ON a.Column1 = b.Column1;

+------------+-----------+---------------------+    
| a.Column1  | a.Column2 | b.Column1| b.Column3|
+------------------------+---------------------+
| 1          |  2        | 1        |   3      |
+------------+-----------+----------+----------+

The NATURAL JOIN of TableA and TableB on Column1 will return:

SELECT * FROM TableA NATURAL JOIN TableB
+------------+----------+----------+    
|Column1     | Column2  | Column3  |
+-----------------------+----------+
| 1          |  2       |   3      |
+------------+----------+----------+

The repeated column is avoided.

(AFAICT from the standard grammar, you can’t specify the joining columns in a natural join; the join is strictly name-based. See also Wikipedia.)

(There’s a cheat in the inner join output; the a. and b. parts would not be in the column names; you’d just have column1, column2, column1, column3 as the headings.)