Component-oriented software development is becoming more and more important for the production of large-scale software applications. Today's systems are constructed by combining different software components rather than built from scratch. Provided component interfaces or informal descriptions are not enough for designing reliable software systems. Therefore we need precise description means for formulating component behavior without uncovering implementation details of the component. In this paper, we will present a model for the design of component-based software systems, where the design aspects of connectors between components play a central role. We will therefore introduce the concept of connector refinement allowing to abstract from technical connector implementations on the design level of a system.
