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
> <mailto:laanwj@gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>     On Fri, Oct 17, 2014 at 10:36 PM, Flavien Charlon
>     <flavien.charlon@coinprism.com
>     <mailto: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
>     <mailto: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