Last time I wrote about Web services attachments and MTOM was XOP, MTOM and web services attachments support when W3C release three MTOM related Recommendations. At that time, the question I asked myself was "Will this settle down all the dust? Well, it to some extend depends on the adoption of SOAP1.2." The statement remains true, but the situation is changed today.
Compared to other attachment support technologies, such as SOAP with attachments and DIME, MTOM is generally considered as a better technology that is more seamlessly integrated with the overall Web services stack. However, since MTOM is defined as a SOAP1.2 feature, its adoption to some extend depends on the overall adoption of SOAP1.2. In the last couple of years, we have seen steady progress in industry adoption of SOAP1.2 and MTOM. It's worth to mention that WS-I is pondering to start a working group to profile SOAP1.2 and MTOM However, SOAP1.1 implementation will continue to exist and function for a few years. For those who are still running SOAP1.1, there was no interoperable way to use MTOM for attachments support.
SAP, Oracle, Microsoft, and IBM have submitted a "SOAP 1.1 Binding for MTOM 1.0" specification to W3C. The spec "details the necessary modifications to the SOAP Message Transmission Optimization Mechanism (MTOM) and XML-binary Optimized Packaging (XOP) specs necessary to successfully use these technologies with SOAP 1.1." (quoted from W3C Member Submission 05 April 2006).
Interoperability was treated as the main goal when the co-submitters discussed the suggested modifications. All co-submitters are considering to provide support in future releases of their platforms.
Consider the submission as final and start to support it. No W3C working group is planned to further work on the submission.
