Practical, experience-driven documentation for maintaining and extending Ellucian Banner PageBuilder applications in higher-education environments.
This repository consolidates internal-quality reference material developed while supporting legacy Banner systems at a public university. It is intentionally pragmatic, opinionated, and written for developers who are already responsible for keeping PageBuilder apps alive in production.
This repo contains three complementary HTML documents:
-
PageBuilder Engineering Handbook
A deep technical reference covering PageBuilder’s mental model, Virtual Domains, datasets, AngularJS scopes, and real execution flow. -
PageBuilder Survival Guide
A day-to-day working guide for developers touching existing PageBuilder pages, Virtual Domains, and resources. -
PageBuilder Pitfalls Cheat Sheet
A concise collection of the most common traps, failure modes, and proven fixes encountered in real Banner PageBuilder work.
All documents are provided as self-contained HTML, with dedicated dark (screen) and print versions and consistent layout across both.
- Higher-ed software developers maintaining Banner / PageBuilder apps
- Developers inheriting legacy PageBuilder pages with little documentation
- Teams onboarding new devs into Banner Extensibility
- Developers who already know SQL, PL/SQL, and JavaScript and need PageBuilder-specific reality
- Beginners learning JavaScript or SQL
- “Hello World” PageBuilder tutorials
- Official Ellucian documentation
- Marketing or feature overviews of Banner
This material assumes you are already working in a production, legacy, higher-ed environment.
Recommended order:
-
Start with the PageBuilder Survival Guide
Use it while actively working on pages, domains, or debugging issues. -
Reference the PageBuilder Engineering Handbook
When you need to understand why something behaves the way it does. -
Keep the PageBuilder Pitfalls Cheat Sheet open
Especially when PageBuilder is “being weird” and not throwing helpful errors.
These documents are designed to be used together.
This repository is published as a browsable reference site via GitHub Pages.
- Use the dark versions for on-screen reading.
- Use the print versions for hard copies or PDFs.
- Links from the index page open in new tabs to preserve navigation.
The HTML files can also be downloaded and used locally with no build step.
- Pragmatic over academic
- Maintainability over cleverness
- Assume legacy, production risk, and institutional constraints
- Treat PageBuilder as AngularJS + PL/SQL under a DSL, not a WYSIWYG tool
If you understand the real execution flow, PageBuilder becomes predictable — even when it’s unpleasant.
- HTML only (no PDFs)
- Print-friendly layouts included
- Actively maintained as real issues are encountered
- Built from internal notes, prior work, and production debugging
This repository is not affiliated with or endorsed by Ellucian.
All product names are used for descriptive purposes only.
Content reflects real-world experience maintaining Banner systems and may not align with official documentation.
Tanner Davis
Software Developer · Higher Education
Focus: legacy systems, maintainability, and survivable enterprise stacks