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Connector synthesis represents the problem of (semi-)automatically producing the communication and coordination code for an assembly of heterogeneous software entities in a way that the composed system (i.e., made by a composition of the software entities plus the connector) behaves as desired. Historically, this problem is related to the supervisory control synthesis problem in the area of discrete-event systems.

As a particular case of CONNECT, by assuming to deal with software components already designed to communicate with each other, one of the main issues in connector synthesis is how to establish properties on the coordination code by only assuming a limited knowledge of the single component properties. A possible answer to this problem is to define an architectural approach in which the software architecture imposed on the assembly prevents component coordination anomalies.

The basic idea is to build applications by assuming a 'coordinator-based' architectural style. Then, by operating on the coordinating part of the system architecture, an equivalent version of the system which is failure-free can be obtained. A failure-free system is a deadlock-free one and it does not violate any specified coordination policy. A coordination policy models those interactions of components that are actually needed for the overall purpose of the system.