mysql> SELECT  * FROM tb1 ;
+----+------+
| id | num  |
+----+------+
|  6 |   60 |
|  7 |   70 |
|  8 |   80 |
|  1 |    1 |
|  2 |    2 |
|  3 |    3 |
+----+------+
6 rows in set (0.00 sec)

mysql> SELECT  * FROM tb2 ;
+----+------+
| id | num  |
+----+------+
|  4 |   40 |
|  5 |   50 |
|  9 |   90 |
|  1 |    1 |
|  2 |    2 |
|  3 |    3 |
+----+------+
6 rows in set (0.00 sec)

内连接:

mysql> SELECT  * FROM tb1 JOIN tb2 ; 
+----+------+----+------+
| id | num  | id | num  |
+----+------+----+------+
|  6 |   60 |  4 |   40 |
|  7 |   70 |  4 |   40 |
|  8 |   80 |  4 |   40 |
|  1 |    1 |  4 |   40 |
|  2 |    2 |  4 |   40 |
|  3 |    3 |  4 |   40 |
|  6 |   60 |  5 |   50 |
|  7 |   70 |  5 |   50 |
|  8 |   80 |  5 |   50 |
.......more......
return 36 rows in set (0.01 sec) 
AND NATURAL JOIN :

    mysql> SELECT  * FROM tb1 NATURAL JOIN tb2 ;
    +----+------+
    | id | num  |
    +----+------+
    |  1 |    1 |
    |  2 |    2 |
    |  3 |    3 |
    +----+------+
    3 rows in set (0.01 sec)

自然连接只是一种避免输入的快捷方式，假设连接是简单的，并且匹配相同名称的字段。

SELECT
  *
FROM
  table1
NATURAL JOIN
  table2
    -- implicitly uses `room_number` to join

和……一样。

SELECT
  *
FROM
  table1
INNER JOIN
  table2
    ON table1.room_number = table2.room_number

然而，你不能用快捷格式做的是更复杂的连接…

SELECT
  *
FROM
  table1
INNER JOIN
  table2
    ON (table1.room_number = table2.room_number)
    OR (table1.room_number IS NULL AND table2.room_number IS NULL)

SQL在很多方面并不忠实于关系模型。SQL查询的结果不是一个关系，因为它可能有重复名称的列、“匿名”(未命名)列、重复行、空值等。SQL不将表视为关系，因为它依赖于列排序等。

SQL中NATURAL JOIN背后的思想是更容易更忠实于关系模型。两个表的NATURAL JOIN的结果将有按名称重复的列，因此没有匿名列。类似地，提供了UNION对应和EXCEPT对应，以解决SQL在遗留UNION语法中对列排序的依赖。

然而，与所有编程技术一样，它需要纪律才能发挥作用。成功的NATURAL JOIN的一个要求是一致地命名列，因为连接隐含在具有相同名称的列上(遗憾的是，SQL中重命名列的语法很冗长，但副作用是鼓励在基本表和视图中命名列时遵守纪律:)

注意，SQL NATURAL JOIN是等价连接**，但这并不妨碍它的有用性。如果NATURAL JOIN是SQL中唯一支持的连接类型，那么它仍然是关系完整的。

While it is indeed true that any NATURAL JOIN may be written using INNER JOIN and projection (SELECT), it is also true that any INNER JOIN may be written using product (CROSS JOIN) and restriction (WHERE); further note that a NATURAL JOIN between tables with no column names in common will give the same result as CROSS JOIN. So if you are only interested in results that are relations (and why ever not?!) then NATURAL JOIN is the only join type you need. Sure, it is true that from a language design perspective shorthands such as INNER JOIN and CROSS JOIN have their value, but also consider that almost any SQL query can be written in 10 syntactically different, but semantically equivalent, ways and this is what makes SQL optimizers so very hard to develop.

下面是一些语义等价的查询示例(使用常用的零件和供应商数据库):

SELECT *
  FROM S NATURAL JOIN SP;

-- Must disambiguate and 'project away' duplicate SNO attribute
SELECT S.SNO, SNAME, STATUS, CITY, PNO, QTY
  FROM S INNER JOIN SP 
          USING (SNO);                        

-- Alternative projection
SELECT S.*, PNO, QTY
  FROM S INNER JOIN SP 
          ON S.SNO = SP.SNO;

-- Same columns, different order == equivalent?!
SELECT SP.*, S.SNAME, S.STATUS, S.CITY
  FROM S INNER JOIN SP 
      ON S.SNO = SP.SNO;

-- 'Old school'
SELECT S.*, PNO, QTY
  FROM S, SP 
 WHERE S.SNO = SP.SNO;

**关系自然连接不是一种均连接，而是一种投影。——philipxy

内部连接是这样一种连接，即连接表中的匹配行对于返回的第一个表中的一行是必需的 外部连接是这样一种连接，即对于返回的第一个表中的一行，已连接表中的匹配行不需要 自然连接是一种连接(可以是自然左连接，也可以是自然右连接)，它假设连接条件是两个表中同名列匹配的位置

我会避免像使用瘟疫一样使用自然连接，因为自然连接是:

not standard sql [SQL 92] and therefore not portable, not particularly readable (by most SQL coders) and possibly not supported by various tools/libraries not informative; you can't tell what columns are being joined on without referring to the schema your join conditions are invisibly vulnerable to schema changes - if there are multiple natural join columns and one such column is removed from a table, the query will still execute, but probably not correctly and this change in behaviour will be silent hardly worth the effort; you're only saving about 10 seconds of typing

mysql> SELECT  * FROM tb1 ;
+----+------+
| id | num  |
+----+------+
|  6 |   60 |
|  7 |   70 |
|  8 |   80 |
|  1 |    1 |
|  2 |    2 |
|  3 |    3 |
+----+------+
6 rows in set (0.00 sec)

mysql> SELECT  * FROM tb2 ;
+----+------+
| id | num  |
+----+------+
|  4 |   40 |
|  5 |   50 |
|  9 |   90 |
|  1 |    1 |
|  2 |    2 |
|  3 |    3 |
+----+------+
6 rows in set (0.00 sec)

内连接:

mysql> SELECT  * FROM tb1 JOIN tb2 ; 
+----+------+----+------+
| id | num  | id | num  |
+----+------+----+------+
|  6 |   60 |  4 |   40 |
|  7 |   70 |  4 |   40 |
|  8 |   80 |  4 |   40 |
|  1 |    1 |  4 |   40 |
|  2 |    2 |  4 |   40 |
|  3 |    3 |  4 |   40 |
|  6 |   60 |  5 |   50 |
|  7 |   70 |  5 |   50 |
|  8 |   80 |  5 |   50 |
.......more......
return 36 rows in set (0.01 sec) 
AND NATURAL JOIN :

    mysql> SELECT  * FROM tb1 NATURAL JOIN tb2 ;
    +----+------+
    | id | num  |
    +----+------+
    |  1 |    1 |
    |  2 |    2 |
    |  3 |    3 |
    +----+------+
    3 rows in set (0.01 sec)

INNER JOIN和NATURAL JOIN之间的一个显著区别是返回的列数。

考虑:

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

TableA和TableB在Column1上的INNER JOIN将返回

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      |
+------------+-----------+----------+----------+

TableA和TableB在Column1上的NATURAL JOIN将返回:

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

避免了重复列。

(AFAICT从标准语法来看，您不能在自然连接中指定连接列;连接严格基于名称。参见维基百科。)

(在内部连接输出中有一个欺骗;a和b部分不会在列名中;你只需要用columnn1, column2, columnn1, column3作为标题。)