Molecular typing of bacterial pathogens is an important issue in the epidemiological analysis of emerging infections in humans and animals. Numerous methods have been developed for and applied to a wide variety of bacteria of medical, veterinary and zoonotic importance. The present minireview provides a description of a new typing approach designated subtracted restriction fingerprinting (SRF), its use for typing of Salmonella isolates and a comparison with the most widely used typing techniques for these bacteria. SRF is based on double restriction endonuclease digestion of whole cell DNA, followed by a fill-in reaction with specifically tagged nucleotides and subtractive capture of selected restriction fragments. This results in a reduced number of fragments optimal for separation in standard agarose gels.