Start a service without starting it's dependencies

[Bryan Young]

I have a system architecture which is similar to the example used in the Monit documentation (Dependencies chapter)

  WEB-SERVER -> APPLICATION-SERVER -> DATABASE -> FILESYSTEM
      (a)               (b)             (c)          (d)

The issue is:  I would like to start only the database (I do not want to start the application server or web server).  The Filesystem service is already running.  Is it possible to only start the database service without starting its dependent services?