Proyecto: Estabilización y actualización de sistema legacy de reservas
Rol: Análisis, corrección funcional y actualización de entorno
Tecnologías: PHP 5.4 → 7.4, MySQL (mysqli), hosting compartido
Ámbito: Subdominio productivo
Sistema: Reservas turísticas multilingües con gestión histórica y flujo reserva → venta
Context
A subdomain hosting a legacy system for tour reservations and historical management, originally developed in PHP 5.4 and used for the daily operation of activities related to astronomical observation.
The system included multiple business rules, advanced client search functionality, and operational state management, and had been running in production for several years.
Although functional, it presented frequent errors, performance issues, and dependency on an obsolete PHP version, making its use and maintenance increasingly difficult.
Main System Features
- Creation and management of tour reservations in multiple languages
- Client association by:
- Hotels
- Travel agencies
- Country of origin
- Language
- Management of related entities:
- Creation of new travel agencies
- Creation of new hotels
- Operational workflow:
- Reservations → sales status once the tour is completed
- Business rules dependent on astronomical context (not modified)
Issues Identified
- Constant visible errors when executing searches or actions
- Use of practices tolerated in PHP 5.x that generated warnings and failures in modern versions
- Inefficient searches, especially:
- Name-based searches returning the entire historical dataset
- Excessive result sets causing slowness and system lockups
- Inconsistent results when filtering by hotel, agency, language, or country
Objective
To fix functional errors and stabilize the system in a modern PHP environment, improving usability and performance without altering the existing business logic.
Work Performed
1. Legacy System Analysis
- Review of PHP 5.4 codebase
- Identification of recurring errors and critical points
- Understanding of the complete reservation and sales workflow
2. Environment Upgrade
- Migration of the subdomain from PHP 5.4 to PHP 7.4
- Minimal compatibility adjustments required by the new version
3. Technical Error Fixes
- Correction of undefined constant usage
- Normalization of comparisons and variables
- Removal of visible warnings and errors without refactoring the system
Example:
// Código legacy
if ($mes == Enero) { ... }
// Corrección compatible
if ($mes == 'Enero') { ... }
4. Search and Performance Improvements
- Fixes to filters returning incorrect results
- Implementation of result pagination
- Load reduction by avoiding massive historical record returns
- Significant improvement in response times and usability
5. Production Deployment
- Full functional validation
- System running in PHP 7.4 in production
- Post-deployment stability verification
Results
- Stable legacy system operating in production
- Visible errors eliminated
- Functional and efficient search capabilities
- Improved performance when handling large historical datasets
- Technical foundation prepared for future progressive improvements
Technologies
- PHP 5.4 → PHP 7.4
- MySQL / mysqli
- Legacy system without framework
- Shared hosting + production subdomain
Status
✔️ System stable in production
⏭️ Progressive modernization recommended as a future phase