Model Driven Architecture (MDA) has become a mainstream framework for modeldriven and component-based development. To achieve the faster and less costly software development promised by MDA, automating the development process with tools is critical, but not easy. One reason is that MDA lacks a precise and concrete development methodology. On the other side, stepwise refinement is a formal mechanism which facilitates the development of systems correct-by-construction by incrementally applying the refinement rules. But the limitation of available refinement rules and the lack of integrated support tools make the method hard to scale up to complex models. The research presented in this thesis aims at exploring techniques to automate the MDA development process through application of the refinement mechanism as model transformations. We use the refinement for Component and Object Systems (rCOS) in the research, as the formal theory supports component-based modeling, and includes a comprehensive refinement calculus. We define a UML profile that augments rCOS with standard UML elements and diagrams, implement a set of the refinement rules as model transformations, and integrate them into a CASE tool. Thus the full componentbased development process can be driven by interactively applying the refinement transformations. Particularly, we present a transformation from object-oriented models to component models, so the OO design and component-based techniques can be seamlessly combined in the development process. Automation of these transformations places a high demand on transformation tools. We adopt the graphical notation of QVT Relations, an intuitive and powerful language for defining model transformations. But currently there is no practical support tool available. We propose an approach to implement QVT transformations as executable XSLT programs. A tool, named QVTR-XSLT, has been developed to support the approach. The tool has a graphical editor for specifying a QVT transformation with the graphical notation, and a code generator which automatically translates the transformation to XSLT programs. However, the QVTR-XSLT tool marks a useful attempt to bring the OMG standard language to practice.