An important amount of research has been devoted to consistent view updating. In this paper we propose a method that follows a new approach to deal with this problem. Our approach is aimed at obtaining intensional translations that satisfy a view update request, instead of obtaining extensional translations. Intuitively, our translations are intensional in the sense that they characterise multiple possible values for a set of base fact updates such that the request is satisfied when the updates are applied using these values. Each characterised set of updates constitutes an extensional translation. The main advantages of following this approach are to improve the meaningfulness of the translations to the users; to increase the efficiency of obtaining them; and to facilitate the treatment of infinite domains. We also show in the paper how our intensional method can be applied to database schema validation and we point out the advantages of using an intensional method in this case.