What would be a good example on having refresh-insert or refresh-update attributes set to true on properties?

The classic example is where you have a column like 'createdOn' that has a database default such a 'getdate()', and you want the TransferObject to be populated with the database value.

So you would tell the column to be refresh-insert="true" and ignore-insert="true"

Another example is if you have triggers that change values, and you need them to be reflected in your TransferObjects.