Optical scanning holography (OSH) is a digital holographic technique with many unique properties. In the article we will introduce the principle and the applications of the OSH. First we will introduce the setup of OSH. We will show that the OSH can be operated in the coherent mode and the incoherent mode. Besides, the scanning hologram can be modulated by the system pupil. Finally, we will particularly introduce two application topics of the OSH. The one is the acquisition of an incoherent hologram and a fluorescent hologram. The other one is the acquisition of a filtered hologram and a coded hologram.