The technique and application developments of the deformation and displacement measurements based on the digital holography(DH, including the digital speckle interferometry) was reviewed. Because of advantages of high accuracy, non-invasive, full-field and dynamic measurement, DH became one of the most important technique for deformation and displacement measurement. In recent years, the development of DH technique was mainly in the following aspects. Firstly, deformation measurement was developed from one-dimensional measurement to multi-dimensional measurements. Especially, simultaneous deformation measurements in three dimensions was the focus of this domain. Secondly, since curved objects were common in practice. However, in-plane and out-of-plane deformation were the main concern for curved object, which needed the 3D shape information of the curved objects. Thus, for curved objects, simultaneous 3D shape and deformation measurements were studied. Thirdly, to further extend the field of view and the depth of the measurement, techniques based on long wavelength and long distance were explored. Furthermore, measurements based on DH technique progressed from engineering domain towards biomedical domain to facilitate deeper researches in biomedical domain. Meanwhile, various application improvements of deformation measurement based on DH technique were covered in this review.