This is just a guess, but I can imagine sipa's address index branch might be more suitable for an use case where information about any address is required - jmcorgan continued to maintain a usually somewhat up-to-date version:

https://github.com/jmcorgan/bitcoin/tree/addrindex

As for balance queries, that's not possible out of the box and I have my own branch for this with a few other RPC calls that are noted in the README:

https://github.com/dexX7/bitcoin/tree/master-addrindex-extended

When using the original, you need to ensure a transaction is part of the main chain and wasn't orphaned. If you consider using my branch, please consider it twice and review the changes first.

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] About watch-only addresses
From: Warren Togami Jr. <wtogami@gmail.com>
To: Bitcoin Dev <bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net>
Date: Mon, 20 Oct 2014 12:37:40 -1000
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=320695
I made a branch of Bitcoin 0.9.3 plus backports including watch-only and a huge pile of patches cleaning it up from the master branch.  It seems to work fine although it is not heavily tested.  I suppose if you use ONLY for watch-only it can't be harmful?  Dunno.

Warren

On Sat, Oct 18, 2014 at 12:13 AM, Wladimir <laanwj@gmail.com> wrote:
On Fri, Oct 17, 2014 at 10:36 PM, Flavien Charlon
<flavien.charlon@coinprism.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> What is the status of watch-only addresses in Bitcoin Core? Is it merged in
> master and usable? Is there documentation on how to add a watch-only address
> through RPC.

It has been merged. There is the "importaddress" RPC call, which works
the same as "importprivkey" except that you a pass it an address.

> Also, I believe that is going towards the 0.10 release, is there a rough ETA
> for a release candidate?

Yes - aim is in a few months, probably by the end of the year.

AFAIK there are no nightly builds at this moment. Warren Togami was
building them for a while (at http://nightly.bitcoin.it/) but he
stopped some time around June.

It's not recommended to use master without at least a little bit of
development/debugging experience of yourself (to trace down problems
when they appear), so it's best to build it yourself if you're going
to test day-to-day development versions.

Wladimir

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Comprehensive Server Monitoring with Site24x7.
Monitor 10 servers for $9/Month.
Get alerted through email, SMS, voice calls or mobile push notifications.
Take corrective actions from your mobile device.
http://p.sf.net/sfu/Zoho
_______________________________________________
Bitcoin-development mailing list
Bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development



------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Comprehensive Server Monitoring with Site24x7.
Monitor 10 servers for $9/Month.
Get alerted through email, SMS, voice calls or mobile push notifications.
Take corrective actions from your mobile device.
http://p.sf.net/sfu/Zoho


_______________________________________________
Bitcoin-development mailing list
Bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development