A caricature of UsingDatabaseUpFrontConsideredHarmful.   

Any large platform that does many things for you can "costly" to use up front.   But most realize that if they didn't use an OS up front, things would be MORE expensive than otherwise (for classes of systems that require an operating system - there are classes that don't, and some that only require a very small niche OS).   

So I don't agree with UsingDatabaseUpFrontConsideredHarmful.  For classes of applications that require structured information storage, the database is the operating system for your application.  IF you use it up front, you can probably deliver quality software quite well.