For first ~24hr after new account creation, test submission does not work: Get error center name required but not documented

[corneliusroemer]

Update: After first reporting this bug, during further investigation, it became clearer what the root issue is: That a newly created webin-account will fail when submitting to the test server -but not to the production server.

It would be good to document this - and ideally also fix the root cause, but this is out of scope for this repo which is about documentation.

Original issue

I'm following the excellent documentation. I've just submitted my first project.xml according to the documentation.

However, I get an error <ERROR>In project, alias: "testuser", accession: "PRJEB66852". Missing center name.</ERROR>

The schema for project.xml doesn't even mention center name! How can it be missing? This is the schema for project.xml: https://ftp.ebi.ac.uk/pub/databases/ena/doc/xsd/sra_1_5/ENA.project.xsd

This is the documentation I'm following: https://ena-docs.readthedocs.io/en/latest/submit/study/programmatic.html#create-the-study-xml

I'm using the following project.xml:

<PROJECT_SET>
   <PROJECT alias="cheddar_cheese">
      <TITLE>Characterisation of Microbial Diversity and Chemical Properties of Cheddar Cheese Prepared from Heat-treated Milk</TITLE>
      <DESCRIPTION>This study aimed to characterise the interaction of microbial diversity and chemical properties of Cheddar cheese after three different heat treatments of milk</DESCRIPTION>
      <SUBMISSION_PROJECT>
         <SEQUENCING_PROJECT/>
      </SUBMISSION_PROJECT>
   </PROJECT>
</PROJECT_SET>

And the submission.xml:

<SUBMISSION>
   <ACTIONS>
      <ACTION>
         <ADD/>
      </ACTION>
   </ACTIONS>
</SUBMISSION>

The curl command:

curl -u Webin-XXXX:YYYYYY             -F "[email protected]"             -F "[email protected]"             https://wwwdev.ebi.ac.uk/ena/submit/drop-box/submit

This is the result:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="receipt.xsl"?>
<RECEIPT receiptDate="2023-10-07T01:21:05.041+01:00" submissionFile="submission.xml" success="false">
     <PROJECT alias="cheddar_cheese" status="PRIVATE" holdUntilDate="2025-10-07+01:00"/>
     <SUBMISSION alias="SUBMISSION-07-10-2023-01:21:05:014"/>
     <MESSAGES>
          <ERROR>In submission, alias: "SUBMISSION-07-10-2023-01:21:05:014", accession: "ERA27292128". Missing center name.</ERROR>
          <ERROR>In project, alias: "cheddar_cheese", accession: "PRJEB66854". Missing center name.</ERROR>
          <INFO>This submission is a TEST submission and will be discarded within 24 hours</INFO>
     </MESSAGES>
     <ACTIONS>ADD</ACTIONS>
</RECEIPT>

[corneliusroemer]

I've just found this:

programmatic submission: define center_name= in each element of the submission (hint: wherever alias can be defined, center name can be defined). e.g.

Would be good to add this not just in the broker sectoin but also in the example project.xml

see https://ena-docs.readthedocs.io/en/latest/faq/data_brokering.html#regular-accounts-vs-broker-accounts

[corneliusroemer]

This even happens online with webin. Is it because I recently created that webin account? Should the error message really say "Account has not been confirmed - can't submit yet"?

[corneliusroemer]

Weirdly, this bug only appears on the test instance, not on the production version. This makes it quite hard to test unfortunately.

[corneliusroemer]

I just retried the test submission and now it works. It appears that test submission will only work after 3am has passed post-signup. The center name seems to not be populated correctly on the test server straight after account creation.

I suggest the docs include a note about this to prevent frustration for others in the future.