The 'Apply Parent Changes' utility is used to refresh a work request that may not contain changes that have been made to the Live Database. When a Work Request is created, a snapshot of the Live Database is taken of the area that is extracted to this workspace. If any of the features extracted to this work request are modified in another workspace, and then merged to Live, they will not be reflected in this Work Request until the 'Apply Parent Changes' utility has been executed. This command, in effect, refreshes a workspace to reflect any modifications that have been made to the Live database, since the work request was created.