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