Don't analogize your way into a ditch

Ted Neward analogized the Vietnam War to O/R mapping, and now has to respond to the predictable complaints:

"The Vietnam War is a bad analogy for O/R-M." Vietnam remains, for most Americans, as the quintessential symbol for "bloody, ugly, unresolvable quagmire". And, as some have pointed out in comments on the blog post already, all analogies break down eventually, and this one is no different--as one commenter put it, nobody ever died from a bad O/R-M tool. (Though the day is not far off when such could occur, given the incredible spread of technology into all corners of our lives--it's not too hard to imagine a day when a patient dies because a doctor received incorrect information about a medical allergy from the enterprise system he/she uses to call up patient records.)

Rule number one when making an analogy: Don't pick one that will immediately drive the conversation into a ditch. It's like saying: "whatever you do, don't think of a zebra"...