How to upload a matrix, compressed using gzipencode, to a MSSQL database column with type varbinary(max)

if true
  % the matrix I would like to store
     input = [1 2 3; 4 5 6; 7 8 9];

    % I convert the matrix to a string
      input_txt = mat2str(input);

      % I compress the matrix using gzipencode (downloaded from matlab central), result is uint8 array
      input_zip = gzipencode(input_txt);

      % send the data to the SQL database, the column is type varbinary(max)
       input_hex = sprintf('%x',input_zip);
       sqlquery = ['UPDATE tablename SET columname = ' input_hex ' WHERE ID = 1'];
       curs = exec(conn,sqlquery);

      % extract the data again
      sqlquery = ['SELECT tablename FROM columname WHERE ID = 15060'];
      results = fetch(conn,sqlquery);

      % result in 4x1 int8 while I would expected to get the same vector like I imported so I can rebuild the original input matrix.
  end

I guess I need to convert the uint8 array (input_zip) into another format before sending it to the database, but I can't find the right format. A workaround with storing the data into the database as a string worked, but then I had to write the data to another column of type varchar(max) while I need the data in the varbinary(max) type column.